IT WAS almost a year ago that Trent Reznor sat down with Hit, wondered aloud what mood he wanted to be in, then went down the course of total honesty.
His label, Universal, was overcharging Nine Inch Nails' fans for the band's album, Year Zero, which Reznor felt made him look "a greedy asshole''.
"They're thieves,'' he said. "I don't blame people for stealing music if this is the kind of s--- they pull off.''
That was just the tip of a long, brilliant rant. His comments traveled quickly around the world. Though the music industry is changing fast, few established artists are reacting. Even fewer are calling out their record companies for ripping off fans.
Did Reznor ever hear back from Universal, or Interscope, the US arm of the company he was signed to?
"Um, I heard some 'We'll look into it' from the US version, but then I started hearing lots of grumbling about what a bad guy I am,'' he says.
"It did seem like that was the beginning of the end for me . . .''
To tell the truth, at that stage Reznor didn't particularly care what effect his comments had; one more contract-fulfilling CD and he was outta there. (That album, the Year Zero Remixed set, dropped a few months later.)
"There was no strategy involved in me saying what I said,'' Reznor argues. "That was what came out of my mouth, then it got a life of its own. But I'm glad it did what it did, because they should have been called out for that kind of behavior, 'cos it's ridiculous.''
Now, Reznor is a free man.
"It's wonderful and terrifying at the same time,'' he laughs.
The new Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts I-IV, has been issued his way.
When released via the NIN website at the start of March, fans could buy the album by download or order a hard-copy version, including four-LP vinyl and deluxe CD sets.
The album was also licensed to companies around the world for a more traditional release into stores at the beginning of April.
More boldly, fans could download part one of the four-part instrumental album free at www.nin.com several weeks before the full album was available to buy.
"What we find as we're doing it ourselves is we're finally able to try to do something that record labels haven't done for some time -- and which has led to the predicament they're in -- and that is, remember what it's like to be a fan,'' Reznor says.
"What does the consumer want these days? When you're competing with free, and you're competing with the speed of the internet and the short attention span and the bombardment of information, why not treat people with respect? What we've tried to do with this release is try to treat people the way I would like to be treated as a consumer.
"Give them some options, not having to deal with any kind of copy protection, high-quality files, value for money and the ability to get it free if you want to.
"I'm not saying it's been figured out yet and there are certainly holes in where we're at right now. But it's such a moving landscape that you have to look at each thing minute by minute and see what's appropriate.
"As of March 2008, I feel like this was the best way to put this type of record out. That might change next week, who knows?''


IT'S worked. In the first week of Ghosts' availability online, Nine Inch Nails reported about 800,000 transactions, earning $1.74 million.
"For me it's been an interesting way to get out a record that would have fallen through the cracks had it been on a major label,'' Reznor says.
"It's something they wouldn't have known what to do with -- 'what is this?' I don't know what it is. It just felt good to do and it's interesting. It's not a Beyonce record, so you probably don't know what to do with it.''
The instrumental album always carries a whiff of filler between real albums. There's some truth in this for Reznor, who says he wasn't quite ready to throw himself into the second part of the planned trilogy that began with Year Zero.
"I'd found myself back in Los Angeles after touring for a while. I felt kind of inspired, but I didn't have some giant master lyrical plan, or any real heavy thing to give out to the world,'' he says.
"If I don't think about it, stuff just starts to come out of my subconscious. So I started thinking, what would happen if I never tried to funnel it into a bigger shape and just let it go where it goes?''
So he called producer/collaborator Alan Moulder and said, "How about, 10 weeks from now, whatever we finish, that's what we release.''
They ended up with Ghosts I-IV: 36 tracks, two hours of music.
"Was it something 'between' big statements? Probably,'' Reznor says.
"It became its own statement. It was the most free-form, least-pressure thing I've ever worked on.''
He has described the album as "dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture''.
But these foreboding soundscapes conjure the type of locations few people would actually want to be.
Reznor breaks into laughter.
"I know,'' he says. "When I finished it I was playing it for a friend and I said it was kinda like daydreamy. And they were like, 'What the f--- are you . . .' And I thought, maybe I'm not completely normal yet.''
Trent Reznor, icon of industrial rock darkness for the past 20 years, normal? Is he, at almost 43 years of age, trying to be normal?
"It's not so much normal as, I've realized, certainly since getting sober, I'm less concerned about trying to kill myself. The romantic notion of self-destruction that attached itself to me in my 20s and came to fruition in my 30s is behind me.
"Maturity has crept into my life in certain forms. I'm getting my head around what's appropriate and feels right to me as an artist now.''
In the days when Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral had made NIN alterna-rock kings, Reznor (addled by drink and drugs) all but had his ending mapped out. It was going to end in a ball of flames, and it was going to end soon.
"It felt like the idea and the trajectory of Nine Inch Nails was not one of longevity. There was a ritualistic nature to some of the performances in one era in the mid-'90s, and a cathartic nature to it that really felt to me like it had purpose.
"It felt like 'This is leading to some sort of endgame scenario'. The 'downward spiral' is coming true.
"Once the clouds moved in, it was tough to tell what was real from what was a teenage fantasy that had become reality and that I hadn't rethought, and now I'm living it and I'm not sure what . . . you know.
"So all of that feels behind me -- a part of me, but not who I am now.
"I can see through a lot of that as the bulls--- that it was, or youth and romantic confusion. It makes more sense to me now.''
Nowdays, after leaving the record label he had been with since 1991, Reznor sees a long and varied future for himself and Nine Inch Nails.
"It's been exciting in terms of other options that have started to present themselves. I've realized I do have options outside the realm of Nine Inch Nails, or expanding the idea of Nine Inch Nails.''
This future may include television. Though crippled by the writers' strike, a proposed TV series based on the Year Zero concept is "still churning along''.
There are other ideas too, "possibilities that would get me out of write a record/tour, write a record/tour . . . collapse'', Reznor laughs.
This future may not, however, include bashing out Head Like a Hole and Closer on stage at 70.
"I'm sure every musician in the world has said the same thing, so just let me add my name to the list: that doesn't appeal to me, squeezing into the fishnet stockings,'' he laughs.
"Well, let me think about it . . . maybe. No.
"I think Ghosts is a step in the right direction of keeping Nine Inch Nails as something that's always mattered to me and been relevant to who I am at the time, and still has meaning and doesn't become a parody of whatever it might once have been.
"It's tough trying to be objective about that,'' he says. "But I am trying.''


Ghosts I-IV (Shock) out Saturday.