The one addiction that helped Trent Reznor
Addiction haunts the music of Nine Inch Nails. The personal and professional history of Trent Reznor is one blighted by battles with alcohol, cocaine and heroin. From 1994’s masterpiece The Downward Spiral onward, there isn’t a corner of his music that isn’t informed at least a little by the ways his self-destructive tendencies can manifest.
However, there’s one addiction of his that’s taken weeks, maybe even months of his life away. One that he may never kick, or even regret; one that he’s actually created art on behalf of. And that would be his lifelong addiction to video games! It’s true, Reznor has described himself as “an avid gamer all [his] life” on more than a few occasions. On the one hand, die-hard Nine Inch Nails fans might actually resent this fact.
In an interview with Spin, writer Neil Strauss noted that the Nine Inch Nails frontman was unpacking two large boxes as he moved into his new home in Big Sur, California. The said boxes contained various game consoles and stacks of video games. In the interview, Reznor admitted to Strauss that while he is prone to writer’s block, his gaming habits do get in the way of his music, too.
He said, “I’m a video game addict, I could have written 15 more records in the time I’ve spent playing Doom“. A reminder that no matter how big-time our favourite musicians get, they’re just as susceptible to the same time-sinks as anyone else. However, in the years since that interview, Reznor has had the opportunity to make his gaming hobby a lot more productive than most.
How did Trent Reznor end up working in video games?
After mentioning to anyone who’d listen in the 1990s that his favoured way of relaxing after a concert (that didn’t involve dealers) was kicking back with his copy of Doom, the game’s developer, ID Software, took notice. They offered Reznor the chance to compose music for one of their follow-ups to Doom, the 1996 first-person shooter masterpiece, Quake.
Quake was another smash hit for the studio, and its soundtrack was hailed as one of the best in the history of the medium. So much so, ID invited Reznor back into the studio for Doom III, not only for the music this time but for the sound design as a whole. Unfortunately, this would be less successful. Due to, in Reznor’s own words, “time, money and bad management”, he had to abandon the project.
However, much like his work in film scoring that had begun two years prior to the release of Quake, with Oliver Stone’s nasty little gem Natural Born Killers, video game music would become yet another outlet for Reznor’s relentless creativity. In 2012, he composed the theme music for Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and at the time of writing, has an incredibly exciting upcoming project.
Trent Reznor and his partner Atticus Ross will compose the music for The Last of Us developer, Naughty Dog’s project, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. This will be Reznor’s first full soundtrack for a video game in nearly two decades, and it’s a sign, if one is needed, that if we are truly passionate about something, it can always inspire us to create. No matter how many hours we may spend away from reality, in another world.
