Trent Reznor explains why NIN’s upcoming ‘Bad Witch’ is an album and not an EP: “EPs feel less important"
There's been a small amount of confusion and a large amount of excited anticipation as fans await Nine Inch Nails' final installment of their recent EP trilogy 'Bad Witch'.
Recently, when we covered the release of NIN's new Bowie-inspired track 'God Break Down the Door,' we pointed out how 'Bad Witch' is listed as an LP on NIN’s website and how Trent Reznor has been referring to it as an album in interviews, even though the much-awaited record has just six tracks on it.
Whereas 'Not the Actual Events' and 'Add Violence' were presented as EPs, 'Bad Witch', the third and final installment in Nine Inch Nails’ multi-year music trilogy, is now confirmed to be released as an album, Consequence of Sound reports.
Yesterday, (May 21) Trent Reznor took to NIN’s fan forum, Echoing the Sound, to explain the band's motive behind labeling 'Bad Witch' as an album. Apparently, it all comes down to exposure on streaming platforms.
It all started when Quantum550, a member of the NIN forum, voiced his concerns about what he believed to be the band’s false advertising in a recent post:
"I know very well how an album length is and an EP length is. This is an EP," user 'Quantum550' wrote in a recent post. "You can consult every source out that this duration is of an EP. An album would be 7 tracks at minimum and over 30 minutes. F**king hate music industry sometimes."
"From what I’ve heard until now, Add Violence ranks #1 to my taste and NTAE ranks #2. This will probably rank a low #3. The EP must have delayed for obvious reasons… (all apologies, etc) but the real fact is lack of inspiration. That is the truth I think."
Forum members and fans were then in for a big surprise. Reznor, who is sporadically active on the forum under the username 'teitan' decided to fire a reply at the rant:
“EPs show up with singles in Spotify and other streaming services = they get lost easier. EPs feel less important in today’s music-isn’t-as-important-as-it-once-was world. Why make it easer to ignore?”
"We’re not charging any more for it so why get worked up about it?” Reznor added, before concluding the post with "Quantum550: s*ck my entire c**k."
Forum members absolutely lost it when they realized what had just happened. Reznor’s aggressive response was received well by the Echoing The Sound community, with user 'ninsp' commenting: “This thread was already the f**king greatest, and then Trent dropped in and just laid waste. What a time to be alive.”
'Bad Witch' drops on June 22, is composed of six tracks and has a run time of 30:11, which ever so slightly longer than the run time of the first two EPs of the installment (21:11 and 27:13, respectively).