Question
What was your first exposure to Nine Inch Nails?
Hi guys, just a fan here with a quick question. I’m pretty sure this has been asked before, but I’m really curious, how did you all get into Nine Inch Nails?
For me, it started with the DOOM community. People kept mentioning how Mick Gordon was heavily inspired by Nine Inch Nails’s work on Quake. When I first heard the name “Nine Inch Nails,” I was immediately intrigued, it just sounded so cool and intense.
The first thing I listened to was the Quake soundtrack, and I was interested . It was dark, atmospheric, and unlike anything I’d heard before. That pretty much pulled me into NIN as a whole, and the rest is history.
Now I can’t stop listening to The Fragile, The Downward Spiral, Year Zero, Ghosts, and now even Tron: Ares.
At this point, I finally get why so many people love Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. There’s just something special about their music.
Same. Head like a hole, Only, The hand that feeds, closer were always on the local alternative station which is all I listened to until my first iPod in 2005ish
Same. “I wanna boink noise you like an animal” piqued my interest as a 10 year old who grew up off the Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead when that was released
Though it was the first Lollapalooza ever in Phoenix and the set was cut short.
The 111° sun melted all of his equipment. He played two or three songs, kicked over a stack of Marshall amplifiers the size of a skyscraper, flipped us off and marched right off the stage
The music video scared the absolute shit out of me as a kid when it came out (I was like 5 or 6 years old), especially the monkey. But at the same time, it was confusing because the underlying beat was so catchy. I'd be too afraid to watch the video but I'd want to hear the music so I'd put it on and look away.
Now as an adult I can fully appreciate the artistry for what it is, the fact that beneath the dark facade what was drawing me in was how it's structurally just an incredible pop song.
Mine was this but it was 1999. I was 11 and my dad and I have always connected over music and had a thing where we would sit in the car while running errands and let a song play out if it was one we liked. Have a very specific memory of Closer being one of them and him going "yep, you're gonna really like this when you get older." Here I am at 37 and they were my first tattoo and I've seen them 15 times. Dad knows me very well!
I wonder if this is unique experience, but I first came across Nine Inch Nails being mentioned by a character in an Animorphs book when I was a pre-teen in the late 90s. A teen character in the book told her mom that NIN stood for “Nice Is Neat” because she knew she wouldn’t approve of her listening to “that kind of music.” It really stuck with me and I remember wanting to listen. I’m not sure when exactly I first heard the music but back then we listened to the radio in the car a lot, so I’d discover music through that.
Animorphs!!!! I remember that! Was it Cassie that told her parents about 'Nice is Neat'? I laughed when I read that and secretly referred to NIN as Nice is Neat for a while.
Natural Born Killers soundtrack for me, I was in high school when it came out. Immediately went and picked up PHM and broken, been my favorite band since.
Oh god, not me carbon dating myself lol. The marketing for Terminator: Salvation used The Day the World Went Away. That was stuck in my head for a while before I finally learned it was Nine Inch Nails, and the rest is history.
ETA: And y'know what, I'm one of the few people that still likes that movie, and I'm not afraid to say it lol. Part of that nowadays is because of my introduction to NIN. My NIИtroduction, if you will.
Same here! I was in high school back then, and honestly, I wasn't aware this was NIN. But then The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo came out and I slowly pieced it together until I eventually discovered TDS (and never went back).
Pretty much the same. I knew closer prior because that was basically pop music but I never cared to look into the artist. I also heard their music in man of fire but never cared to really dive in also but loved it. That terminator trailer was amazing and got me hooked to NIN.
1989 or 1990. I had this friend called Will. His sister would drive us to school. Just about every day she would play either George Michael or Information Society on cassette in her car. But one day she had a different tape and the next day she played it. And the next. And then we realized that George Michael and Information Society had been replaced...by Nine Inch Nails. I got some birthday money soon thereafter and bought PHM at Camelot Records at the mall.
The first time I heard any NIN music was actually in the game Hi-Fi Rush (banger game btw). 1,000,000 and the Perfect Drug play during boss fights, and I knew I needed more after I heard them.
Picked up TDS through Columbia House after seeing the Closer video for the first time. I was super sheltered as a kid, so as soon as I got into high school in 97 I was able to sneak peaks at MTV and started playing catch up on early 90s music. Really enjoyed PHM and TDS, and when Fragile came out a couple years later it blew my mind.
Twelve-years-old, staying up late watching Headbangers Ball (or was it 120 Minutes?). They were hyping the premiere of the “Wish” video at midnight. I was mesmerized.
Ha! This is my exact same experience. I was a total metal head when I was a kid and religiously watched Headbangers Ball every week. “Wish” was on regular rotation. I remember thinking that it was different and creepier than the other stuff played on HBB, but I liked it. I had no idea it was the same “band” that did Head Like A Hole. However, my first NIN purchase wasn’t until The Fragile after hearing We’re In This Together. Actually, my first Trent-related purchases were the Lost Highway and Natural
Born Killers soundtracks.
My friends and I were obsessed with PHM in middle/high school. When Broken came out, it was even better.
I long wondered how a bunch of kids hanging out near the auto shop in a rural PNW town heard of them, but the WAX TRAX documentary kind of answered that, they’d target places like my rural coastal extraction town.
When DWS came out, about half of my friends turned on the band as having “sold out.” While that’s pretty dumb, it was the 90s. And it was jarring to hear the cheerleaders and football players suddenly interested in “our” band.
I got the fragile while I was in college, at midnight when it came out and didn’t try the DWS until after that since I was also an insufferable 90s person.
I was at a party at my buddy's place in high school and I snuck away to make out with his sister. Things were heating up and she put on PHM. And now that I'm telling the story, I wonder if I love NIN or miss her? lol
Technically Closer Precursor on the Se7en soundtrack. But I was two young in 1995 to know who/what/where. So, my first known experience would have been around 2001/2002 when Kerrang would play the video for Perfect Drug on a regular rotation, and I became somewhat obsessed with it.
Seeing the “Closer” video on one of those VH1 countdowns about top songs. I was curious and downloaded Pretty Hate Machine via Limewire….instantly hooked, went down a discography rabbit hole, and the rest is history.
I was watching the broadcast of the Woodstock 1994 festival on tv and this mud covered band played the absolute worst live set I ever seen, but they still sounded awesome and were cool as shit. From there I rented the following cd's from my local library in this order and was for ever hooked: Fixed, the Downward Spiral, Pretty Hate Machine, Broken. And yeah, that's a weird order, but this was pre-internet and I didn't have any friends who were into this to tell me the best order, I just went with what was available.
Apart from the Terminator Salvation trailer where they played "the day the world went away", what really got me into them was The Social network of soundtrack and its mesmerizing beats. That really got me closer to TR as I worked my way from the quieter ambience stuff to the heavier tracks
The Year Zero ARG, maybe just a couple years after it ended. Cloverfield's ARG was formative for me and I was looking for more like it. Was blown away by the storytelling and art, and fell in love with how the music continued functioning as clues for the story.
Tried to get into the rest of the discography and bounced off thinking "ahh this is too scary and angry :(" 2016 rolled around and I heard the Year Zero guys were putting out a new album and decided to jump in. Hands down my favorite band in the world now.
My most ingrained early memory was being driven to school right around the time Closer was huge. It’d get played on my radio station of choice for the drive pretty regularly. It was my mum driving me, and I remember the intense sense of awkwardness every time it would come on.
Probably the lamest answer of all, tiktok. Closer was trending in 2021 and that’s where I first heard them and fell in love with the sound. I’d never listened to that sort of music before (my taste was vaguely rock-ish stuff)
MTV & radio in 1994. Briefly, before someone panicked and changed the channel lest it corrupt a child.
Real exposure: my 17 year-old brother shouting “Listen to the music, not the lyrics!” before gunning it down a backroad while blasting “Heresy” and changing my life. I was 11 and man, you really can’t beat that song at 85 MPH. It was changing. Loved NIN ever since.
I was 13 and babysitting my next door neighbors kids. They had a huge CD selection that they let me borrow from. I found Pretty Hate Machine, listened to it in one sitting, and was instantly and forever obsessed.
Not too long after Filter released Short Bus (1995), I had loaned a friend the album, as he couldn't afford the CD or something. Somehow this CD got stolen,.so I took one of his CDs in exchange. His mum said that's as good, because the album I took was heretical. It was The Downward Spiral, and the rest is history haha.
Fall of 1989, yet another a Friday night listening to WRVU College Radio when out of nowhere the single "Down In It" was earwormed into my cranium. Shortly thereafter purchased my first of many copies of Pretty Hate Machine and we've been married ever since.
A friend had given me TDS, but it was just the disc and it was scratched to hell. I didn’t know what it was but I’d seen the logo around on t-shirts and patches. The CD was kind of listenable up until about reptile. Mr. Selfdestruct blew me away on first listen. At any rate, that started my first and longest obsession with any specific artist.
My aunt and uncle had cable and when we visited I got to watch mtv. The video for Head Like a Hole had just come out and was in heavy rotation. I bought PHM around then. My guess would be late 1990?
I started dating a goth girl in college (2000). Went to her house and she had the Things Falling Apart CD. Fell in love with it immediately and took it home.
Was aware of NIN beforehand via MM’s autobiography, but had only really heard Closer.
My parents started letting me fall asleep to the radio at night when I was about 10 since I started to like “rock” music and my parents were pretty chill. One night I heard Head Like a Hole while lying in bed. I’d never heard ANYTHING like that before.
I swear music changed for me after I heard it. It opened up what I thought music was, what it could do, what it could say. Very cringe. But true. I also stayed up trying to hear it again each night and learn who it was by and it took weeks before I heard it again and what the band name was.
My friend’s older brother was into car stereos and had some rock/electronic CDs he used to demonstrate just how loud it was. That included several NIN albums, including Broken and Fixed.
I saw the live video of Hurt while I was 15 and hospitalized with pneumonia. The TV in my room had terrible reception, and seeing the nature and war footage blending with the snowy, flickering screen are a core memory of mine.
(Unrelated, but I also discovered the band Morphine during my hospitalization.)
Head Like a Hole was used in an episode of MTV Sports that was on when I was doing Saturday chores as a kid. My brother was super into industrial at the time & was like “oh I have this album” & lent it to 9 year old me & things were never the same
Me it was TDWS. My ex introduced me straight out of high school (2003). I had bad insomnia and I remember listening to this album on my portable cd player at 3am. By the time I got to hurt, I was crying and all I wanted to do is give Trent a hug. Still do! Lol been a fan ever since.
I saw a post on Depeche Mode page, that was from Tony Hawk, and there were words by Trent Reznor about Black Celebration live that inspired PHM. Something like that...
6th grade - during the IT class the wallpaper of the school computer I was using got changed by a student to a Year Zero related NIN logo. Got interested in it, found NIN, never left.
I heard Manson was in a music video for NIИ’s “Gave Up” and gave it a look and I was instantly hooked. Downloaded the entire discography right then and there. 2009 or 2010, give or take. I’d been aware of them long before that but it was when it clicked.
I went to see Peter Murphy perform on my college campus in 1990. The opening band was NIN and they scared the hell out of me. But, I ended up becoming a fan when the Broken EP was released a couple years later.
Saw them at the first Lollapalooza festival in 1991 in DC. They cane on in late morning or early afternoon. Sun was blazing and it was 300 degrees so no light show. They tore that shit up. My mouth was hanging open. I was and still am not a fan of industrial music, but had listened to my fair share back in the day. NIN was on a different level entirely that afternoon. People who were sitting on blankets and chatting and getting a suntan while waiting for the headliner because they had heard Been Caught Stealing on the radio twice just sat the fuck up and paid attention. As they should. Even the chick sucking furiously on a straw stuck into a watermelon soaked in grain alcohol. It was great. I’ve been a fan ever since. Of the band, not the watermelon.
I was working at my college radio station in 1989. Playing pretty much anything we wanted but always mixing in industrial and new wave. (We were super into Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Ministry and Skinny Puppy at the time.) One day the single for "Down In It"showed up on the new arrivals shelf… And that was it.
Eventually I would find out when the release date was for PHM and literally be first to buy the cassette at a record store I had to drive an hour to get to. I remember the guy at the counter being like "what's this?" My earliest memory of that record was laying on a fold out futon in my dorm room with headphones on just letting the cassette player flip from side to side to side, I don't think I took a break until after three full listens.
I don't mean to brag but quite honestly short of Trent himself and the 12" delivery guy (doesn't he wish!) I don't know who could possibly be an earlier fan. I totally recognized the musical genius and the no-turning-back change he brought to industrial music. Infusing it with catchy hooks and danceable beats was what that genre had been dying for…
1990, co-worker at Busch Gardens (VA) brought the CD to work and we listened to the entire thing in his hatchback slammed with speakers at 1AM. Went and bought the CD the next morning, saw them a few months later in Virginia Beach.
A few years later when I met my wife, we realized we both had NIN stickers in our back windows. Neither of us knew people that liked them. We've been together for 33 years. :)
One of our girls just saw them at Coachella, so now it's generational!
I was pretty oblivious to music growing up; mostly in part to my parents not allowing anything they didn't like. I was ~19 and had just gone through a bad breakup when a friend played Broken while we were driving. I was blown away by how raw and angry everything felt and how it mirrored how I felt. I've been hooked ever since.
IIRC, I was introduced to them as a teen by Quake around the 2010s. (I'm a big retro gamer) Then, after hearing Mr. Self Destruct on a video I was randomly watching on TDS, and I got hooked. I really got into them after listening to The Fragile in college.
I am sure I heard some of Trents stuff before hand, but it really was the hand that feeds single which led me to buy the with teeth album. I was on vacation at Disneyworld with my parents and sister the week it came out. The day we were at Downtown Disney I bought it at whatever massive media/electronic store they had there at the time!
Lollapalooza '91. I knew bands like Janes, Living Colour, etc, but didn't really know NIN until they hit the stage in broad daylight. That was my first concert too, I was like 14, so definitely had a lasting impact.
My first TR related memory is getting really into that Juno piece for the short film. Had no idea who Trent Reznor actually was for a few years tho.
My first actual NIN experience was reading the Wikipedia page on album art or something, and The Slip was an example of an album with each track’s mp3 having unique embedded art. Listened to the album and hated it.
Getting really into Blackstar and I’m Afraid Of Americans V1 prepared me enough for Bad Witch, which I listened to after liking Anthony Fantano’s review of it. I like The Slip now too.
I remember seeing the “Head Like a Hole” video by Nine Inch Nails on Super Channel in the late ’80s—back when Trent Reznor had that dreadlock-style hair. There’s that striking shot where he’s tangled up in what looks like VHS tape—really raw, chaotic imagery that stuck with me.
Was the first time I thought "I gotta find who that is" watching a movie. The movie still means A LOT to me, simply because it introduced me to my favorit band.
Back in Fourth Grade, I was watching MTV with my older brothers and saw NIN’s music video for Closer. It was so shocking and cool that I had to get that record so later on when my catholic school did a Christmas gift exchange the cool girl who got my name asked what I wanted. Of course I said that NIN cd. Sure enough she pulled through except she didn’t gift me The Downward Spiral CD, she got me Pretty Hate Machine on Cassette. After getting over the fact that it didn’t have that song closer, I probably listened to that tape for years. Little did I know that NIN would be my top favorite band and eventually I’d get The Fragile, With Teeth, and Year Zero album releases on release nights!
I was in college in 2002 and a I was always looking for new music, especially to have in the background while doing school work. A friend from school suggested Nails and handed me a burnt CD with their whole discog on it. I figured why not start at the beginning, and found the sounds interesting, but then I heard "Something I Can Never Have" and I was like Woah, that's something, and it just clicked for me. And then the more I dug into the albums the more I just fell in love with it. I got hooked so fast and since that, NIN has been my most favourite band.
In college I was just at the store looking for a new CD to buy. I knew of Nine Inch Nails, but didn't really know any of there music. I don't know that I had heard any of their songs. This was probably 1995 and I decided to pick up The Downward Spiral and listened in my car ride home and WOW!!, it was amazing. I never heard anything like it before.
Picture it: 1992 - 13/14 year old me either heard Wish on KROQ or saw the video on 120 Minutes on MTV. Instantly fell in love with the angst and raw emotion of Trent screaming “wish there was something real, wish there was something true…” bought Broken and wore it out. My late brother ([he was 8 years older] also had a great taste in music and was a club DJ) said I should listen to PHM. Lent me his CD and then that was it, I was hooked. Thankfully my brother let me keep the PHM CD because he said it was obvious that I liked NIN a lot. Been on the journey ever since.
I would listen to my older brother's copies of "The Fragile" and "The Downward Spiral". Oddly enough "With Teeth" and "Year Zero" really pulled me in and got me into exploring the stuff prior to it.
I saw the Closer music video when I was 16 in 1996. After that the mysterious raven haired guy popped up again on my TV in the Perfect Drug video. At that point I was really digging the sound. After that my ex boyfriend gave me TDS CD to listen to and from then on I was a forever fan. 🖤
My preschool best friend’s older brother Todd introduced me to two things in ~1990 that have stuck with me for my entire life: Akira and Nine Inch Nails.
I definitely did NOT need to see the Broken movie when I was 9, but it made a sizable impression on me and led me to realize that I knew - and liked! - the band that was on MTV all the time a year or so later when TDS came out. All of a sudden I had a favorite band and my brother got me the CD for Christmas. After that I tracked down every Halo I could.
The (demon) seed was planted when I found a sealed copy of The Slip on CD at my local record store for like nine dollars, bought it just because it looked cool and it blew my mind. Got into everything from there
As a kid I used to go to a library that also lent comics books, cd's, tapes, movies. The guy in charge of music selection often put highlights on some albums. I once picked the downward spiral that was upfront at random. The rest was history.
I was a student at UT and went to see the Jesus & Mary Chain show in early 1990. I was into J&MC at that time. Then came Trent & company as the openers to blow my mind away! The next day I went out to buy PHM and have been a fan ever since.
I’m not sure when I first “officially” heard a NIN song, but I remember taking a chance and buying the “broken” EP at a secondhand store in the ‘90s before I had ever heard it. Needless to say, I never looked back!
My first exposure was The Head Like a Hole video on MTV when I was like 10, and then the Wish video not long after. I think I had Broken on cassette tape by the time I was 13 and was hooked.
Mix tape my friend made me from his older brother’s music. I was 11 in 1992. The first song was Alice In Chains - Them Bones, the second was Terrible Lie. He didn’t write the artist or song names down so I didn’t know their name until 1994.
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u/W4NN4M33TTH4TD4D Apr 21 '26
They were unavoidable in the 90s. MTV and every rock station played them so I've been hearing them since I was a kid.