Rumored new Trent Reznor project, How To Destroy Angels, cranks up the pretty hype machine

By Jason Heller | April 28, 2010 | 6:41pm

Aux Features Music

As reported by Daniel Kreps at Rolling Stone, there's a pretty good chance Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor—who tweeted back in February about embarking on a new studio project—is behind How To Destroy Angels, a mysterious outfit that launched an intriguing-yet-barebones website yesterday. The site features a partially obscured photo of a woman who looks suspiciously similar to Reznor's wife, former West Indian Girl singer Mariqueen Maandig; below the photo is a stream of a 40-second, instrumental clip that sounds incontrovertibly NIN-ish. (Although it also resembles, weirdly enough, an industrial version of Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance"—in which case, dude, someone already beat you to it by 13 years.) "SUMMER 2010" is the only other information given on the site.

Furthermore, Kreps points out that How To Destroy Angels is also the name of a record by pioneering industrial band Coil, whose Peter Christopherson has collaborated with Reznor in the past. Of course, talking about Christopherson's possible participation in the group—especially with the lack of any sort of official confirmation from Reznor's camp that the project even exists—would just add speculation to speculation, and lord knows, we wouldn't want to do that.