How Trent Got His Groove Back: Nine Inch Nails Return With New Single, Album

You know how a lot of bands take months and months to carefully tease and promote an album? Of course you do; we talked about it last week.

Well, Trent Reznor seems to have developed a very simple method of promotion that works quite well. Two days ago, as Nine Inch Nails was preparing for their return to the stage, Reznor confirmed via social media that not only was Nine Inch Nails going to do another album but that it was, in fact, finished and coming out later this year.

Today (well, late last night), we get not only an album title and release date, but also a full high quality stream of the album's first single. It's called Came Back Haunted, and it's got the goods. Check it out:

Came Back Haunted does away with (most of) the laptop noise that influenced the last three NIN records and focuses on its tight groove and a pretty straightforward dance beat, rather than disorienting listeners with the experimental sonic blasts and disjointed beats that populated much of Year Zero, Ghosts and The Slip. It doesn't go back all the way (KROQ's music director said it was "in line with the first two albums"); it doesn't necessarily have to "go back" anyway. But, if I must pull something from Trent's back catalogue to compare it to, I'd say it's most in line with 2005's The Hand That Feeds, more specifically its dub mix.

Of course, one cannot simply judge a Nine Inch Nails album from one song, and who knows what Trent has planned for Hesitation Marks? I'm sure we'll have a lot more information to look forward to over the summer.

Hesitation Marks comes out September 3 on Columbia.

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