In case you can’t tell by all the posting I’ve been doing about the soundtrack, I really wanna see The Social Network. It’s just like the story of how MetalSucks was created, only we didn’t go to ivy league schools, we’re not billionaires, and we haven’t sued each other (yet). How dare David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin steal our life story!

Speaking of our life story, here’s how we amused ourselves this week:

• We debuted new music by The Fucking Wrath.
• Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable wondered if America really has any talent, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks discussed the NFL with Job for a Cowboy’s Charn, and Daath’s Eyal Levi taught us about proper etiquette for being a houseguest.
• We spoke to Eric Guenther from From Exile and the new Daath album.
• We checked out new releases by The Serpent & The Siren as well as Mutant Supremacy, Pyrrhon and Parasitic Extirpation.
• We found out that way more of you like nu-metal than we thought.
• We learned how to look like a hot metal chick.
• We bemoaned the latest batch of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees.
• We watched the new Cephalic Carnage video and now we’re afraid we’ll never get a boner again.
• We got excited about the first awesome tour of 2011.
• We declared Cradle of Filth to be a glam band now.

Have a good weekend, folks. See ya Monday!

-AR

Trent Reznor may have dissolved Nine Inch Nails, but the coolest rock star in pretty much the history of ever is still keeping plenty busy. Earlier this week, he released the score the co-composed with Atticus Ross for The Social Network, charging just three bucks for a download from Amazon for the for the fist 48 hours; shock of shocks, Deadline reports that it’s been the Amazon mp3 store’s top seller ever since. (As of this writing, the soundtrack is still available for a mere $2.99; it will go up to a whopping $4.99 later today. It’s not metal, but it is fucking great. Go get it.)

Meanwhile, /Film has a fifty-minute (!) audio interview with Reznor regarding the score, in which the always-loquacious goth idol gives some interesting insights into the music. You can stream or download it here.

And as if all that wasn’t enough to scratch your Reznor itch, try this: Remember how Trent wanted to do an HBO series based on his album Year Zero? I can’t blame if you don’t; that was more than two years ago. But lest we forget, the film and television business can move very, verrrrrry slowly. And so I was elated to see that the project is apparently still alive. Reznor tells the Los Angeles Times:

Click to read more…

I’m violating our usual posting schedule for the second time this week because this news is time-sensitive, and my fellow Reznorians will never forgive me if I don’t make them aware of this ASAP.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score for The Social Network is currently available at Amazon for three bucks… but only for forty-eight hours. After that the price is gonna rise to five bucks, which is still pretty cheap, but, y’know… these are tough times, so why not save the two bucks if you can? And I’m listening to this score right now, and it’s really great, so I don’t know why you’d hesitate anyway.

Also, if you want a higher-quality version of the soundtrack, you can now pre-order a CD, Blu-ray, or 180g vinyl here; all pre-orders come with an immediate download in your choice of format.

And as if all that weren’t enough, Reznor is holding a re-mix contest, natch. The grand prize winner gets a trip to LA to meet Reznor and Ross, and opening night tickets to see the flick. So that’s pretty sweet. The only hiccup is that the deadline is MIDNIGHT TONIGHT, so if you wanna enter, you had better get crackin’. Go here to get all the details and enter.

Finally, I leave you with this interesting observation that Renn Brown made over at C.H.U.D.:

Click to read more…

In other news, Trent Reznor continues to be an awesome dude.

Back in July, Mr. Self-Destruct himself announced that he and his longtime collaborator, Atticus Ross, would be scoring David Fincher’s new film, The Social Network; now they’re taking pre-orders for that score (in a variety of formats, natch), and, at the same site, giving away five songs for free if you’re willing to hand over your e-mail address.

A statement from Reznor regarding the subject reads as follows:

Click to read more…

Back in July we found out that Trent Reznor and his longtime collaborator, Atticus Ross, were composing the score for the upcoming, completely awesome-looking drama, The Social Network; now the movie’s website is live, and there’s some weird, ambient, uh… well, it’s more like buzzing than music, but I know that some people are speculating that it’s part of Reznor and Ross’ contribution to the film. And while we can’t confirm this just yet, it certainly sounds like something Reznor might do. And if it is part of the score for the film, well… holy shit. I guess Reznor wasn’t kidding when he said that the film was really “dark.”

Check it out here and let us know what you think. The Social Network opens October 1 in the U.S.

-AR

[via C.H.U.D.]

A lot of people think that the work of Aaron Sorkin is too treacly and stylized, and while I certainly understand that complaint, I tend think that, overrall, he’s one of the most entertaining (and certainly one of the most distinctive) writers out there these days. Everyone and their mother can quote A Few Good Men, Sports Night was one of the best series ever to get prematurely cancelled by a stupid network, and The West Wing won a shit ton of accolades for a reason. Sure, Studio 60 and Charlie Wilson’s War were a little on the meh side, but his 2007 Broadway play, The Farnsworth Invention, was engrossing and educational.

The Social Network, Sorkin’s script about the creation of Facebook, made The Blacklist (a Hollywood compilation of the most-read and most-enjoyed unproduced screenplays) a couple of years back, and the announcement that David Fincher — he of Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac, and Benjamin Button fame (to name but a few) — was going to direct the film was certainly reason to get excited about it.

More reason to get excited: Trent Reznor has announced that he’s been hired to score the film. From the official NIN website:

Click to read more…

That might be a misleading headline, and I apologize if you came here thinking you were gonna see news of live dates for How to Destroy Angels. Actually, just the opposite – The PRP reports that during a recent online fan Q&A, HTDA  announced that they “have no plans to tour in the immediate future and will instead be focusing on their full-length effort which is expected out early next year.”

Which is news that I’m actually okay with. For one thing, it doesn’t say they’ll never tour – just not right now. For another thing, it means they’re working on new music, and even though their EP just came out this week, I could certainly stand to hear even more. And, finally, there’s the fact that the idea of a HTDA live show just doesn’t really get me that excited. Not that I don’t like them – I obviously do – but other than Trent’s usual sweet live light show, I can’t really see this group being all that exciting in a concert setting. It’s obviously very technology-driven music, and in the past I’ve found shows where most or all of the people on stage are playing synths and computers to get kinda tedious after awhile. Of course, I would go see HTDA live and hope I was completely wrong about that – and those aforementioned Trent light shows are always 110% kick-ass – I’m just saying, if I don’t attend a HTDA concert before 2011 or whenever, I’m not gonna bang my head against the wall.

The above photo is from the shoot for the video of “The Space in Between,” by the way, and you can check out more here.

-AR

I know I mentioned this on Friday, but I also know that a lot of you spent the last three days destroying a vast percentage of your brain, so I just wanted to remind you: as of today, the debut self-titled EP from How to Destroy Angels – a.k.a. “Trent Reznor’s new project with his wife” – is available for free download.

As we’ve been saying all along, it’s basically Nine Inch Nails with female vocals – which isn’t a bad thing. The sad news is that the group has already released half the tracks in some form or another, and, unfortunately, I think we’ve already heard the album’s best material. That’s not to say I don’t like the remaining songs; I had just hoped that HTDA had some ace up their sleeve that they were waiting to unveil. But nothing really tops “A Drowning” and “The Space in Between.”

Of course, you may very vocally disagree with me, as is your right to do so; and one way or the other, the album is free, so you really have nothing to lose by at least checking it out. Download it here.

-AR

I will switch teams for Trent Reznor right now and I don’t care who knows it. He really is just making a strong play for the title of “Coolest Dude EVER.”

It was exactly a month ago today that we first heard about How to Destroy Angels, Renzor’s new project with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and frequent Nine Inch Nails collaborator Atticus Ross; and it was just a few days ago that we heard that the group’s debut EP would be coming out July 6. Well, that release date either only applies to physical copies of the album, or has been scrapped, or was never real to begin with, ’cause now HTDA have announced that they will be GIVING THE EP AWAY FOR FREE in 320 kbps mp3s THIS TUESDAY, June 1. If you “pre-order” the album right now – pre-ordering in this instance basically amounting to joining an e-mail list – you can download a new song, “The Believers,” right now.

Click to read more…

Well, clearly, Trent Reznor has been using all the downtime from not touring productively. Not only have How to Destroy Angels, his new project, announced a July 6 release date for their six-song debut EP, but he’s now written, recorded, and released his first Nine Inch Nails track of the post-live show era. It’s a theme for the upcoming movie Tetsuo: The Bullet Man, the latest entry in director Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo series.

I’ve been hearing about the Tetsuo movies for years, but I’ve never actually seen one, so, uh, geek fail, I guess. But I know that this latest movie is the first to be filmed in English, and that it got a good reception at the Venice Film Festival last year (before Reznor had actually delivered his contribution) and the Tribeca Film Festival this year (after Reznor had delivered his contribution), so take that for what it’s worth. In any case, the NIN track is – do I really have to say it? – awesome. It’s instrumental, and for large chunks of it my mother would probably argue that “it’s just noise,” and it would be hard to argue with her – if this was the sound of my alarm clock, I’d never hit the “snooze” button again. But it’s epic; awesomely, epicly epic, in fact. You can listen to it below, or just download it from Some Kind of Awesome.

And I’ve put the trailer for after the jump. It certainly looks like Reznor-appropriate.

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I don’t think that Nine Inch Nails have ever made a bad video, and Trent Reznor isn’t about to start now – the new clip for How to Destroy Angels’ “The Space in Between” is provocative, possibly pretentious, morbidly beautiful, and wholly memorable (which is really the entire point of a music video, I suppose). Insofar as what the video “means,” well… I’m not entirely sure I know. Assuming the titular “in between” is some kind of purgatorial state, well… I guess we can interpret the fact that Reznor and his wife/vocalist Mariqueen Maandig are lip synching while clearly “deceased” as being somehow related to said purgatorial state. I’ll have to ponder it some more, though.

Whatever the heck the video is supposed to mean, it is, like I said, morbidly beautiful, and the song is gorgeous. As with “A Drowning,” it pretty much sounds like NIN with a female vocalist… but I have absolutely no problem with that.

HTDA will release a six-song EP sometime this summer. Longtime NIN collaborator Atticus Ross is also involved in some capacity; he’s the dude smoking a cigarette and watching T.V. in this video.

-AR

It was just last week that we first heard about How to Destroy Angels, the new outfit from Trent Reznor and his wife, Mariqueen Maandig; and now here we are, and Pitchfuck already has the group’s debut song, “A Drowning.”

So what do we think? Personally, I fucking love this song. I predicted that HTDA would “sound more or less like late-era NIN,” and it does; swap out Maandig’s vocals for Reznor’s, and this basically sounds like a hybrid of “All the Love in the World” and “The Line Begins to Blur” from With Teeth.

Click to read more…

It was just a few months ago that Trent Reznor announced that not only was he working on some new material for Nine Inch Nails, but also some new material for “something else that isn’t Nine Inch Nails.” Of course that got us all foaming at the mouth – What non-NIN project could Trent be working on? WHAT NON-NIN PROJECT COULD TRENT BE WORKING ON???

The answer, it would seem, is How To Destroy Angels (a process that is apparently quite different from training your dragon), a new outfit he’s starting up with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig. There’s already an official website for the group, which is very NIN in design, and word of an EP to be released this summer.

I wasn’t really a fan of Maandig’s last band, West Indian Girl, although my problem with them wasn’t her vocals – it was just that the music wasn’t my pace. But the below teaser video for the group would suggest that HTDA is going to sound more or less like late-era NIN, presumably with some combination of Maandig and Reznor on vocals – which is fine with me. The last time I can recall hearing Reznor doing vocals with a woman was when he did some backing stuff for Tori Amos on her song “Past the Mission,” which I thought was pretty swell… so I’m game for whatever.

-AR