THE NIN HOTLINE

Man, I remember when Consequence of Sound first came on the scene. The site was something I referred to, with regularity, as "clickbait garbage" - a site that rehashed news, often without credit, with sensationalized headlines meant to capture attention on sites like Google News and other aggregators. It's a credit to the brand that over the years, they've invested in building a publication that features original writing and good old fashioned music journalism.

All that's to say they've just published an article by Spencer Kaufman, who speaks at length with Trent, Atticus, and Peel It Back creative director Todd Tourso, a kind of retrospective on the Peel It Back tour, which launched with nearly zero press, but closed out to universal acclaim. It's a good read, going from the inception of the tour, through the execution - even touching on swapping drummers with the Foos (spoiler alert: this is a drama free zone, happily) - and hinting that there's new NIN in the works.

On Friday, December 5 at around noon Eastern Time, an email went out to the NIN mailing list announcing early access to the With Teeth 20 collection - new clothing and limited edition merch riffing on Rob Sheridan's iconic designs and style for the 2005 album. Creative director John Crawford called out that lots of people were involved - evidenced by Eleanor Kelly's edition-of-two hand-knit, hand embroidered sweater (not commercially available).

If you recall - when NIN toured for [WITH_TEETH], they played a set of tiny west coast venues, which immediately sold out, and then moved up to club venues across the US - which also immediately sold out. Trent was anxious about how relevant Nine Inch Nails was after a six year gap between albums, but the demand was definitely there. In an echo of that misplaced anxiety, even before the collection was publicly available without a password, several of the items had sold out. One item, a pin art collectible in the style of the Only video, was limited to 300, all of which immediately sold. Some jerk in Ottawa has already listed theirs for $499 on eBay, another sold for $349. So it goes.

The Downward Spiral gets a lot of attention - rightly so - but I know that over the years, I've met a ton of people for whom With Teeth was their Downward Spiral. Particularly those who've struggled with addiction, it hits so many resonant notes, and has helped them feel like they're not alone in the challenges they're facing. The album debuted at #1, and had three #1 singles on the modern rock track charts in the US. The Hand That Feeds plays in sports stadiums, I heard a remix of Only blasting out of the Victoria's Secret store in the King of Prussia mall the one time I've been there in the last decade. MP3s were already nipping at the heels of CD sales in 2005, and it's easy to think there wasn't as much of an impact from this album that took NIN in an almost garage-band direction. And I think the rate at which this stuff sold out speaks to that quiet popularity.

I managed to get a shirt for my wife before inventory ran out, and it's showing up this week - but just as NIN came back to play arenas after the club tour, the WITH TEETH 20 collection is now taking pre-orders for most of what's sold out. But don't count on this stuff being there for too much longer. And if you're reading this years later, and want to see what went up on the site - with any luck, merch.nincatalog.com is also still running, and you'll find details on the WITH TEETH era page.