The NIN mastermind also revealed how the NIN-Foo Fighters drummer swap happened, admitting that it was a "surprise" to him that former drummer Ilan Rubin was leaving.
It has been five long years since the release of Nine Inch Nails‘ last proper studio album, 2020’s Ghosts VI: Locusts — seven years, actually, if you go back to Bad Witch, the band’s most recent full-length with lyrics. But from the sounds of it, our long national nightmare might soon be over.
In a new year-end interview with Complex, NIN mastermind Trent Reznor teased that he’s psyched for the long-running industrial rock band’s next era. “We are working on new stuff, and we’re excited to work on it,” Reznor said without giving a timeline for when the new music might manifest. “We are prioritizing working on Nine Inch Nails over just taking on every single thing that comes up in the other category.”
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Reznor said at this point he “can’t say much” more about the untitled next project, but he added a ray of hope about his level of excitement for the new music. “The difference between now and a year ago is the fuse has been lit, and the desire is there.”
NIN recently released their dark, thrumming instrumental soundtrack for Tron: Ares, and the band is still in the middle of a break from its global Peel It Back tour, which they will pick up again on Feb. 5 at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans.
Speaking of the tour, Reznor also weighed in on the most unusual drummer switch his band engaged in with the Foo Fighters in July, in which longtime NIN drummer Ilan Rubin left the band and joined the Foo Fighters, while short-term Foos drummer and well-traveled session/live drummer Josh Freese split with the Dave Grohl-led group after two years and re-joined NIN; Freese was NIN’s drummer from 2005-2008.
“The reality of that scenario was it was a surprise to me that Ilan was joining the Foo Fighters,” Reznor said in his first extended comments on the baseball-style swap. “Ilan is a great musician and had been a solid guy during his tenure in the band, but it presented a problem in terms of we knew there was another leg of the tour that we’re going to start in February [2026]. And we could either replace him immediately [after the early summer 2025 European leg] or we could replace him after the [late summer 2025 North American] leg, which would mean trying to find someone over the holiday break.”
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As soon as he heard the news about Rubin’s new gig, Reznor said he knew he could call Freese and be confident he could play a show that night, “’cause there’s no doubt about his ability. And that’s essentially in a shorthand what went down,” Reznor said. “He was available and willing, and it just made sense on a number of levels. Being completely honest, we’re adults and we’re professional, but we’re also people with emotional feelings and a sense of camaraderie and intent and purpose. I thought it would feel better to play that last wave of tours with someone that wants to be there, and that’s what went down.”
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In a recent chat with SiriusXM’s Eddie Trunk on his Trunk Nation show, Freese chalked up the drummer swap to happenstance. “As far as the drummer swap thing, it’s funny because it’s just coincidence the way it worked out,” Freese told Trunk. “It’s not like there was a purposeful drum swap. And, actually, if Ilan, who was playing with Nine Inch Nails, who joined the band after I left in 2009, if he left Nine Inch Nails to go join — pick a band — Muse, I don’t know, Trent would’ve called me. It’s not like it was an intentional swap. It’s like when Trent needed a drummer, when Ilan split, he was, like, ‘Well, I’m gonna call Freese.’ And he called me and I was, like, ‘Hell yeah.’”
