Trent Reznor

Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965 in Mercer, Pennsylvania), better known as Trent Reznor, is the creative force behind the band Nine Inch Nails. He releases his albums under his own record label, Nothing Records. He currently lives in New Orleans.

Reznor was the credited producer for Marilyn Manson's albums Portrait of an American Family (1994), Smells Like Children (1995), and Antichrist Superstar (1996), as well as the soundtracks for the films Natural Born Killers and Lost Highway.

Reznor likes video games, most notably DOOM by id software, which he has said he played in the Nine Inch Nails tour bus after doing shows. He also created the soundtrack for id Software's hit Quake. (As a side-note, the NIN logo also appears on the nailgun ammo boxes in Quake)

Trent returned to work with id Software in 2003 as the sound engineer for video game Doom 3. However, due to "time, money, and bad management" he had to abandon this project, and his audio work did not make it into the game's release.

During the five years between his albums The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile (1999), Trent Reznor struggled with depression, writer's block, and the death of his grandmother. It was reported that Reznor had considered committing suicide during this period. In a 1999 interview for Rolling Stone magazine, he said that "It just took me time to sit down and change my head and my life around. I had to slap myself in the face: 'If you want to kill yourself, do it, save everybody the fucking hassle. Or get your shit together."