Trent Reznor is definately not just another face in the rock crowd. Nine Inch Nails' mastermind is its self-proclaimed Goth Antichrist, or, as he puts it in "Mr Self Destruct,"
!i am the need you have for more...and i control you i am the bullet in the gun...and i control you i am the truth from which you run...and i control you i am the silencing machine...and i control you i am the end of all your dreams...and i control you i take you where you want to go i give you al you need to know i drag you down i use you up mr self destruct"
The right wing's poster boy for teenage sex, drug use and violence, Reznor became the scrapegoat for a lot of these clauses. Mostly sprung by his notorious lyric:
"i want to fuck you like an animal i want to feel you from the inside"
taken from "Closer," which was off his 1994 breakthrough album, "The Downward Spiral", which some would say, got Reznor the position he is in today.
Reznor's reputation for his dark, eerie side of the psyche came equally from his intense, cathartic live shows including memorable appearances at the very first Lollapalooza tour (with Jane's Addiction), back in 1991 and his ferocious, mud-splattered performance at Woodstock 1994. Not surprisingly, with a title like "the dark Lord of Gloom", the videos would have to almost certainly correspond with this image.
What are the most controversial and routinely censored visual images? Well for a start, there is the surreal film shots for "closer", directed by Mark Romanek. Consisting of scratchy, recovered images of a crucified monkey, a spinning pig's snout and an elevated, rotating Reznor stretching out to play the infamous piano piece. The Bunuelian dream imagery of "The Perfect Drug," which appeared on David Lynch's Lost Highway soundtrack, also created by Mr Reznor.
