Trent Reznor is officially God.

Ladies and gentlemen, he's done it again.

I totally forgot to post a blog ranting and raving about this a few months ago, but as you may be aware (but probably aren't, because you're probably dumb), on March 2, Trent Reznor released a brand-new, two-hour, 36-track instrumental Nine Inch Nails album via nin.com called Ghosts I-IV, with absolutely no prior announcement, beyond cryptic hints, that a new record was coming out. Free of his record label, Trent sold the album at various tiers - $5 for the digital download, $10 for the download and a physical two-disc CD copy with mighty fine artwork, $75 for a deluxe edition with a hardcover book, the multi-tracks for remixing and the album on a Blu-Ray in hi-def, and $300 version with all that shit, plus a 4-LP vinyl set, signed by Trent himself.

Long story short, the guy made a million dollars in a week - more in one week than he saw from his last album, Year Zero, to date (it was released about a year ago.) That's pretty fucking incredible.

So it looked like all Trent was going to do was tour. Nope - the other day, again out of nowhere, Reznor releases a new single called "Discipline" (this time with vocals) to radio, having finished mastering the song the previous day. A note in the ID3 tags says "Go to nin.com on May 5," leading me to believe that there is yet another new album on the way from Nine Inch Nails.

I absolutely bow to Trent Reznor at this point, even more so than I used to. For not only is a musical genius, but now he's completely changing the way shit gets done in the music industry. Free of his label, he can pretty much drop a record whenever he wants. And being sober and apparently thinking more clearly and having more creative spurts, the guy's pretty much shitting out music right now. Once again I have to lament that Flo Rida is on hour rotation at every shitty radio station in America and this, because it's by NIN, will never get played - despite the fact that the song is perfectly radio-friendly, and a lot cleaner than most of what's on the air these days anyways to boot.

But I digress, and now you will listen to my instructions and you will follow them flawlessly:

Step One: Go to discipline.nin.com and download your free copy of "Discipline," and check back on May 5 because there will probably be an EP or possibly a full-length album awaiting you when you do. For the record, it's a great song - fun and dancy, albeit slightly more in the spirit of the With Teeth album. If you liked "Only," you'll like this.
Step Two: If you haven't already, also go to ghosts.nin.com, or go to Target, and check out Ghosts I-IV. It's completely instrumental, but it's a great record too - as Reznor describes it, "A soundtrack for daydreams." For those familiar with NIN, there are little bits and pieces of this record that each remind me of different albums. It's very The Fragile-y, but there's also some very The Downward Spiral and Year Zero elements to it. If you have a hard time actively sitting down and listening to instrumental music, it also makes for great study/work/drawing/other music.

I'll know if you don't do these things, and I won't be happy about it.