Nine Inch Nails to Release ‘Not the Actual Events’ EP

Only a few days after being coy about his promise to have new Nine Inch Nails music out by the end of the year, Trent Reznor has delivered. Today, he announced that next Friday, Dec. 23, will see the release of a five-song EP called Not the Actual Events.

“It’s an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make,” Reznor said in a statement on the band’s website. “It’s an EP because that ended up being the proper length to tell that story.” The post also adds that Reznor’s collaborator on soundtracks, Atticus Ross, is now an “official bandmate.”

Pre-orders for Not the Actual Events are being accepted on their webstore. In addition to a one-sided 180-gram, 12-inch vinyl record, they’re offering what they’re calling a “digital + physical component” version, which combines a download with an undisclosed item that will not be shipped until the first week of 2017. Those who order the vinyl will be able to download a digital copy at 12:01AM Pacific on Dec. 23, with the physical copy shipping on an unknown date in the spring of 2017.

Nine Inch Nails are also embarking on a vinyl reissue campaign of their entire catalog throughout 2017, with Broken, The Downward Spiral and The Fragile coming next spring. The Fragile, which came out in 1999, will be released on four LPs, adding 37 instrumental, alternate and unreleased tracks. “The Fragile occupies a very interesting and intimate place in my heart,” Reznor said. “I was going through a turbulent time in my life when making it and revisiting it has become a form of therapy for me. As an experiment, I removed all the vocals from the record and found it became a truly changed experience that worked on a different yet compelling level. The Fragile: Deviations 1 represents Atticus and I embellishing the original record with a number of tracks from those sessions we didn’t use before. The result paints a complimentary but different picture we wanted to share.”

A year ago, Reznor swore that there would be new material from Nine Inch Nails in 2016. On Tuesday, he admitted that he and Ross got bogged down with scoring two movies, but suggested that it still might happen. “That will be part of the reveal,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil it. If I’m interested in a film, I prefer not to watch the trailer. We live in overstimulated times.”

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