Trent Reznor: Kanye West, the Weeknd "Ripped Off" Nine Inch Nails' Stage Shows | Revolver

Trent Reznor: Kanye West, the Weeknd "Ripped Off" Nine Inch Nails' Stage Shows

"I’ll say without any hesitation. And they know,” frontman said in new video interview
Reznor 2018 Getty, Rich Fury/Getty Images for FYF
photograph by Rich Fury/Getty Images for FYF

Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross recently sat down for an interview with BBC Radio 6 Music about their new album Bad Witch, their ongoing tour, and more. In a short snippet shared by the network today, the former figurehead accuses Kanye West and The Weeknd of "ripping off" the industrial legends' live setup. Reznor begins by outlining the band's pioneering usage of "screens and experimental production techniques" during their earliest concerts: a jarring approach to stage production which the aforementioned mega-stars blatantly rehashed for their own stage shows, according to Reznor.

"I remember us watching a string of bands on Coachella from the comfort of our couch," Reznor told the station's Lauren Laverne. "Every band has a video playing behind them, and every band is synced up with a convenient, polite lighting package, you know?" He goes on to claim, "I saw Kanye West blatantly rip off, and the Weeknd rip off, our tours production-wise, which I'll say without any hesitation — and they know."

It's worth pointing out that Nine Inch Nails and Kanye have both developed productions with Martin Phillips — otherwise known as the architect of Daft Punk's signature pyramid setup — as Pitchfork points out. The overlap doesn't end there: the Weeknd's lighting and production designers, Sooner Routhier and Robert Long, cited Reznor as a point of inspiration for the R&B singer's "Starboy: Legend of the Fall" tour in an interview with Billboard last year. "We've always called [the Weeknd's] aesthetic the Nine Inch Nails of R&B," stated the duo.

Elsewhere in the interview snippet, Reznor looks ahead to Nine Inch Nails' upcoming tour alongside the Jesus and Mary Chain, framing it as more unhinged than previous treks; He describes the template for the tour as "music being played somewhat sloppily with an element of danger and uncertainty and unpredictability." The complete interview airs tomorrow on BBC Radio 6.