Oscar-Winning Composer Trent Reznor Announces Tour, Drops New Song

For Trent Reznor fans such as myself, Christmas came early around midnight last night, when frequent David Fincher collaborator and Oscar-winning composer Trent Reznor (The Social Network, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) released the first new Nine Inch Nails song since 2008 (!!!).  If someone had told me Industrial Santa Claus was making the rounds, I would've stayed up.

The track's called "Came Back Haunted," and will appear on the band's Hesitation Marks (brilliant title), dropping via Columbia Records on September 3rd. There's more, but let's get interactive up in this piece and listen to Reznor's new song as we get through the rest of the news:

This album - which is available via pre-order on iTunes, of course - will be the first major label release for Reznor's Nine Inch Nails since 2007, when Year Zero arrived. The pair of albums that followed were issued primarily via the band's website, with one (The Slip) famously posted free-of-charge and accompanied by a note that said, "This one's on me." Reznor's luck with labels has run the gamut over the years, so here's hoping that Columbia gives Hesitation Marks the support it deserves.

While surely exciting to longtime fans, the pseudo-resurrection of Nine Inch Nails raises a compelling, obvious question: what does this mean for Reznor's successful foray into film-scoring? The new album's been officially announced alongside a brand new list of concert dates, and those dates indicate that, at the absolute earliest, Reznor won't be free and clear to focus on a new film score for some time. There are a few things to keep in mind here, though: for one, Reznor's notorious for completing projects under the radar while appearing preoccupied with other things (including Hesitation Marks, produced over the past year).

More telling, however, is this: Reznor's interest in film scoring thus far has been limited to collaborations with director David Fincher. And that director's next film - until getting slapped with the Delay Stick recently due to a casting snafu - would've been that long-in-development 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea remake for Disney. On the one hand, there was never any indication Reznor would score that film (let the record show that I would never stop laughing if Trent Reznor was hired to score a Disney movie), and his style might be completely at odds with Fincher's vision for the film. On the other hand, Trent Reznor is, much like the Pope, infallible, and who are we to question his and David Fincher's judgement?  People bitched about "Cat People" being used in Inglourious Basterds, and look how that turned out.

At any rate, today's a banner day for Reznor fans no matter how you cut it, and I'll be looking forward to whatever he does going forward regardless of whether it's on a stage or through the Drafthouse's surround-sound system. Here are those tour dates - see you guys in San Antonio on the 5th.

(* = Support TBD, but HitFix.com says Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions in The Sky are playing dates as openers.)