“Pussy pop”: the band Trent Reznor thought he wasn’t good enough to play with
The caustic roots of industrial rock music were never meant to be exposed to the masses. The ugly brutality of their sonic existence was saved for those with enough steel to withstand and, more crucially, understand it. It was inherently a subculture genre of music until Nine Inch Nails came along and served it to the masses.
Within this world of genre fusion, which saw the raw and energetic sounds of punk blended with pop-laden melodies, flourished by the otherworldly capabilities of synthesisers, drum machines, and white noise, the Nine Inch Nails leader, Trent Reznor, saw an opportunity. He was never a musician destined to stay resolutely still in the safety of his own genre; he was designed to push and take whatever idea he once mastered to a completely new space.
Heavily influenced by the production work of Prince and his ambitious studio methodology that saw him working across multiple instruments, Reznor moulded Nine Inch Nails’ sound into something new, spearheading the band’s song ‘Head Like A Hole’. A catchy songwriting structure that showcased traditionalism in its verse-chorus structure, combined with a glossy production finish, made it something of a commercial smash.
But in that success came the fear that Reznor had lost the respect of his subgenre companions, who thrived in the shadows of music commercialism. And of all those acts, it was Ministry that Reznor placed on the highest pedestal, citing them as the influence behind both the band and song name, once claiming, “Listening to Ministry is like having a nine-inch nail hammered into your head like a hole.”
But then in 2014, when the heights of their industrial rock movement were in the past, and when Ministry’s leader Al Jourgensen had reached a more accepting point in their career, a chance for Reznor to collaborate with his one-time hero came in the way of Jourgensen’s side project 1000 Homo DJs.
At this time, Jourgensen was holed up in Chicago Trax recording studios, a space that was integral to the production of Ministry’s greatest industrial works. This time around, on 1000 Homo DJs, Jourgensen was working on a cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘Supernaut’ when Reznor popped his head in and got more than just a look at his once idol.
“It was in a short list of cool memories of being around somebody that I respected and being treated with respect,” Reznor remembered of the experience just watching Jourgensen at work. Then it all changed. He continued, “I remember he was working on Supernaut, and he goes, ‘Hey, you want to try something on this?’ And I’m like, ‘Fuck yeah, I want to try something on this!’”
He added, “It was certainly intimidating at the time, you know, because I also felt like here’s this Nine Inch Nails, some pussy pop band, wannabe you, around the guys that really felt like they were credible to me at the time, and it was very flattering to be acknowledged at that level by those guys, you know, and I didn’t take that lightly, you know, meant a lot to me.”
It was a full circle moment for Reznor, who, over 20 years after making industrial rock a commercial powerhouse, finally got that crucial sense of community acceptance from the man who inspired his whole career.
