Trent Reznor

They're a star-crossed couple, two misfit provocateurs brought together by fate, on a mission of mayhem to shock the system with images of extreme brutality. Mickey and Mallory, the merciless titular figures of "Natural Born Killers"? Or Oliver Stone, the film's director, and industrial-rock star Trent Reznor, who helped shape the movie's ambitious musical track and album? The latter, like the former, was a match made in, well, wherever.

The recent history of the outdoor concert, from a performance perspective, begins with a pyramid. Two Frenchmen known as Daft Punk constructed a massive video-and-computer-enhanced object that blew minds at Coachella 2006 with its gradually unfolding light-and-image show. The pyramid not only made their electronic dance music more visually arresting, it provided a shiny new model for staging music. Witnesses still gush when they talk about how the show married sound and technology to create an event equal parts outdoor art installation and concert.

Perhaps the creepiest parts of 2010's "The Social Network" and 2011's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" wasn't the the icy detachment of the fictionalized "Mark Zuckerberg" or David Fincher's twist on Swedish noir, but the tension-wracked scores from Trent Reznor and frequent collaborator Atticus Ross.  Now Reznor-philes and die-hard Nine Inch Nails fans have some new music from the artist under the newly typographically intense aegis of ...

In spite of its name, How to Destroy Angels is Trent Reznor taking the violence out of his music, then examining in painstaking detail what remains. The Nine Inch Nails frontman, who last month announced the upcoming return of that groundbreaking industrial-rock outfit after a four-year break, is still obsessed with control and how it functions. But in this project he's no longer dramatizing the struggle against it. The songs - cool and collected even when they carry titles such as "And the Sky Began to Scream" - suggest submission more than resistance.

*** 1/2; VARIOUS ARTISTS, "Natural Born Killers," soundtrack ( Nothing/Interscope ) This has been a career year for Trent Reznor, who exhibits as an artist and producer the daring instincts and rich musicality of Prince back in the days when his records mattered.

"Hey, that guy kinda looks like David Bowie. . . . Naahh, can't be." The speaker is part of a growing crowd of onlookers on a downtown Manhattan street. Surrounding him are police officers, paparazzi, men and women carrying walkie-talkies, tourists with cameras and other gawkers--all clear signs of a celebrity in the neighborhood. Still, the doubting passerby has reason to be skeptical.

There's a misconception afoot about "Year Zero," the latest project from musical puppet master Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails. Launched in February with a cryptic message on a tour T-shirt, fleshed out in dozens of websites, scary voicemail messages, Morse code blips, murals, fliers and other real-world propaganda, "Year Zero" reaches a peak (but not its conclusion) with today's album release. There's never been such an extensive or well-planned campaign involving a major pop release.

Trent Reznor has two piles of scientific photo books, their titles promising microscopic views of molecular chaos and such, stacked on the coffee table in his San Fernando Valley hotel suite. It's not that the musician has suddenly acquired an academic interest in biology. Rather, he's on the lookout for pictures that he can use as promotional art for his new album, "The Downward Spiral."

Showtime was still a few hours away, and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was sitting in a hushed, candlelit room backstage at the Air Canada Centre trying to find his scream. Nails' music sounds like a massive nightmare machine, but, on this day, Reznor woke up with his voice small and croaky. As a humidifier gently chugged away in the corner, the rock star smiled faintly and asked, "How old am I again?" The answer is 43, but Reznor, who clawed through some dark years of drug addiction, is a picture of vitality these days with his brawny shoulders and clear-eyed confidence.

There's no reason to suspect the anger and alienation that fueled the rock world in 1991 is going to disappear over the next 12 months, which means an ideal emotional climate for Trent Reznor. Blessed with a brooding, obsessive stage manner that can make Axl Rose seem tame at times, Reznor--the leader of the industrial Angst band Nine Inch Nails--stole the show some nights last summer from heady competition on the "Lollapalooza" tour and he should parlay the success of the group's debut album into a Top 10 contender during 1992.

Nine Inch Nails may have sailed off on its "Wave Goodbye" tour just four years ago, but  Trent Reznor and Co. are ready to say hello again.  The singer-producer announced today in a statement (pasted in full below) that he's re-tooled the core lineup of Nine Inch Nails to include  Jane's Addiction bassist Eric Avery, Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv and, most intriguingly, King Crimson's Adrian Belew, alongside longtime collaborators Alessandro Cortini and Ilan Rubin . As electronics-saturated supergroups with an ear for menace and dystopia go, this lineup seems like a winner for NIN. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Oscars 2013 The statement announced a full arena tour to come this fall and extend into 2014.

This post has been corrected. See below for details. How to Destroy Angels "An Omen_" EP (Columbia) Three and a half stars One of the prettiest songs of the year, How to Destroy Angels' "Ice Age" was in part crafted by an artist best known for his tense discomfort. Trent Reznor, whose early career was spent in a testosterone swirl of machine-gun rhythms but who over the years developed a way to wallow in a slower, creepier kind of misery, has let in some sunlight.

Perhaps the creepiest parts of 2010's "The Social Network" and 2011's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" wasn't the the icy detachment of the fictionalized "Mark Zuckerberg" or David Fincher's twist on Swedish noir, but the tension-wracked scores from Trent Reznor and frequent collaborator Atticus Ross.  Now Reznor-philes and die-hard Nine Inch Nails fans have some new music from the artist under the newly typographically intense aegis of ...

As the lone artistic voice behind Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor regularly had the pleasure of answering to no one during NIN's approximately 20-year run of emotionally damaged hard rock. Now in his mid-40s and into his second career as a film composer, Reznor not only is having to learn a new discipline, but adjust to ceding control and holding back his reflex of saying 'no.' Take, for instance, the music that opens David Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," which marks the second film score for Reznor and his latter-days NIN producer Atticus Ross.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross | "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" Early in the process for scoring "The Social Network," hard rock veterans Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross confessed to feeling out of their element. Sitting recently on his Beverly Hills porch, Reznor recalled, "That wasn't the type of film I thought I knew how to score. It's not the film I would have chosen had I set out to score a film. " Reznor and Ross eventually figured it out, as the digital, atmospheric accompaniment to "The Social Network" won the Oscar for original score.

Industrial rockers, country songwriting veterans, India's soundtrack guru ? the Oscar nominees in the music categories this year are as eclectic as an iPod on shuffle. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, nominated for original score for "The Social Network" with collaborator Atticus Ross, might be the best example of the ethos of serendipity and surprise. "This opportunity came completely out of the blue, and it gave me a chance to work with [director] David Fincher, someone at the top of his field," Reznor said.

In spite of its name, How to Destroy Angels is Trent Reznor taking the violence out of his music, then examining in painstaking detail what remains. The Nine Inch Nails frontman, who last month announced the upcoming return of that groundbreaking industrial-rock outfit after a four-year break, is still obsessed with control and how it functions. But in this project he's no longer dramatizing the struggle against it. The songs - cool and collected even when they carry titles such as "And the Sky Began to Scream" - suggest submission more than resistance.

It's understandable that Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor speaks with the seriousness of a man giving a deposition when he talks about his first album since 1994's "The Downward Spiral." The rock auteur is very much under scrutiny these days. "Spiral," a frightfully dark look at youthful angst, helped Reznor establish a deep, Kurt Cobain-like bond with the Generation X audience.

Plenty of filmmakers took non-traditional routes this season, turning to the world of rock to bring an immediacy to their stories. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails scored his first flick in the Facebook drama "The Social Network," and French disco purveyors Daft Punk anchored Disney's high-concept reboot in "Tron. " Digging deeper, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr brought a human element to "Inception," LCD Soundsystem leader James Murphy distilled the anxiety of "Greenberg" and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich experimented with electronics for "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

"Nothing can stop me now," Trent Reznor snarled as he lunged toward his audience during the song "Piggy" at the outset of Nine Inch Nails' sold-out show at the Hollywood Palladium on Wednesday. The statement held some irony, given that Reznor has announced he's retiring his band, as a live act at least. It's been 15 years since "The Downward Spiral," the concept album about loneliness and despair that contained that song, became the most successful industrial music album in history and catapulted Reznor squarely into the mainstream spotlight.