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Future Ruins, Nine Inch Nails’ film-music festival, is canceled

Future Ruins, the hotly-anticipated Nov. 8 film-music festival from Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, has been canceled.

“Unfortunately Future Ruins will not move forward this year,” organizers said in a statement. “The reality is, due to a number of logistical challenges and complications, we feel we cannot provide the experience that’s defined what this event was always intended to be. Rather than compromise, we’re choosing to re-think and re-evaluate. Meanwhile, we are sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate all the interest and support.”

The Live Nation-produced event at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center was booked as a compendium of cutting-edge composers to showcase their film work in an unorthodox live setting. Headlined by the Nine Inch Nails bandmates, who have won Oscars for their film scores including “The Social Network” and “Soul,” the event was slated to host John Carpenter, Questlove, Danny Elfman, Mark Mothersbaugh and Hildur Guðnadóttir among many others.

The fest’s cancellation comes on the heels of Nine Inch Nails’ sold-out “Peel It Back” tour, which hit the Form last month and is scheduled to return to Southern California in March next year. The band will also play a club-heavy version of its live set as Nine Inch Noize (with collaborator Boys Noize) at Coachella next year.

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Review: At the Forum, Nine Inch Nails conjure rage and dread. Be afraid, Americans

What a piquant moment for Nine Inch Nails to be back on the road playing their version of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans.”

At the Forum on Thursday, for the first show of a final two-night stand of the electronic-rock band’s Peel It Back arena tour, singer Trent Reznor didn’t elaborate on the freshly resonant subtext in Bowie’s song (one that Reznor remixed for the late Brit and, in its music video, played a Travis Bickle-esque creep).

But you could feel the sold-out Forum roil with new unease at that squelching industrial song, as Reznor muttered Bowie’s scabrous lyrics about “No one needs anyone … Johnny wants p— and cars … God is an American.”

At this point, who isn’t a little afraid of Americans? Nine Inch Nails thrive in the murk of base human instinct and tech-driven dread. Who better to help us limn out these feelings of disgust, rage and desolation right now?

Now in their fourth decade as a group, Nine Inch Nails — the duo of Reznor and producer/keyboardist Atticus Ross along with a closely held touring band — does two difficult things extraordinarily well.

For 15 years, Reznor and Ross have served as Hollywood’s eminent techno-intellectuals, with a pair of Oscar wins for their film scores including the brooding lashes of David Fincher’s “The Social Network” and the yearning ambiance of Pixar’s “Soul.” They have an upcoming film-music festival, Future Ruins, that will be the first of its kind and caliber in Los Angeles.

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Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails.

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Trent Reznor.

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Fans react as Nine Inch Nails perform at Kia Forum.

1. Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails. 2. Trent Reznor. 3. Fans react as Nine Inch Nails perform at Kia Forum. (Hon Wing Chiu / For The Times)

But Thursday’s Forum show was a decadent reminder of just how nasty and violent this band can be as well.

Opening on the smaller, in-the-round B-stage, Reznor took a solo-piano run through “Right Where It Belongs,” gradually adding Ross, bassist-keyboardist Alessandro Cortini and guitarist Robin Finck into a squalling “Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now),” before finally introducing drummer Josh Freese on the calisthenic drum workout of “Wish.”

Freese was a last-minute addition to the touring band, after the group unexpectedly swapped percussionists with Foo Fighters days before Peel It Back kicked off. But Freese — an NIN veteran of the mid-2000s — has become a fan-favorite returning hero, bolstering this lineup with pure rocker muscle.

Back on the main stage, they redlined through “March of the Pigs” and seethed with fuzzbox rot on “Reptile.” They veiled the stage in gauze on “Copy of A,” casting dozens of Reznor shadows while he strutted and howled about a despondent, depersonalized modernity.

A second pass through the rave-ready B-stage gave a hint at what the band’s cryptically billed upcoming Coachella set might look like. “Nine Inch Noize” — implying an ongoing collaboration with their opener and collaborator, the German club music producer Boys Noize — took form here under a monolithic, blood-colored lightbox. Reznor, Ross and Boys Noize revved up a new single, “As Alive As You Need Me To Be” from the film “Tron: Ares,” but also revamped the eternal hit “Closer” and “Came Back Haunted” with an after-hours sizzle.

It’s impossible to imagine a single as desperately sexual, as sacrilegiously sacred as “Closer” ever making it to the Hot 100 today. For the Gen Z fans fascinated by Nails’ gothic-erotic aesthetic, it felt more transgressive than ever.

After slashed-up takes on “The Perfect Drug” and “The Hand That Feeds,” the band closed out the set with an opposing pair of songs that covered the full range of what its audience is likely going through today. How viscerally satisfying to scream “Head like a hole, black as your soul / I’d rather die than give you control” as American life seems to unravel with each passing hour.

But of course, the band closed on “Hurt.” Johnny Cash recorded his canonical version at 70, a cover now synonymous with a lion in winter starting down the grave. Just 10 years younger at 60, Reznor performed it Thursday with all the tightly coiled emotion and intimate grandeur of the kid who wrote it. American life is pain; Nine Inch Nails endures.

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Will Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails surprise fans at Coachella?

The Coachella 2026 lineup had, seemingly, begun leaking in the days before its official announcement, as names such as Sabrina Carpenter and Karol G started being discussed as possible headliners. Though, with both names on the heels of widely successful projects, it was hardly a “crystal ball” suggestion — it just so happened to be correct.

Saturday headliner Justin Bieber is still simmering down from a revival that resulted in two consecutive albums — “Swag” and “Swag II,” released on July 11 and Sept. 5, respectively — making his presence at the fest pretty much inevitable.

However, the real crown jewel hiding in the lineup’s fine text was an additional feature that would set off alarms: the inclusion of a group called “Nine Inch Noize” and “The Bunker Debut Of Radiohead Kid A Mnesia,” which was included at the bottom of Coachella’s lineup. Given the online fervor of both these acts it’s worth doing a quick summary of what we know about them.

Naturally, longtime fans of the English quartet swarmed social media to speculate a surprise appearance from the band. Given that Radiohead just announced its first live shows in seven years, it was mentally conceivable that they could throw in an Indio pit stop.

“Surely I’m not the only one noticing Radiohead on the Coachella lineup…” one fan wrote. Another chimed in, “What’s this about the Bunker debut of “Radiohead Kid A mnesia”… So exciting.”

Not only this, but the lineup’s Friday undercards included “Nine Inch Noize,” which seems to be a collaborative project between Nine Inch Nails and German electronic music producer Boys Noize, otherwise known as Alex Ridha. This would be NIN’s first appearance at the festival since 2005.

This one is a bit easier to break down. For context, Boys Noize provided support for Trent Reznor’s brainchild on their recent “Peel It Back” tour and even pumped out some remixes of the band’s hits.

“NIN is listed as Nine Inch Noize. That’s probably because Boys Noize has already been performing as a quasi-half member on the current tour,” one fan explained.

Past performances included a rendition of “Closer,” NIN’s second single off of its lauded sophomore album, “The Downward Spiral,” released in 1994. Though the track already leans into electronic elements, Boys Noize heightens these by tenfold into a techno bliss. On stage, Reznor bounces around under purple lights while Ridha glides along his deck.

Under a YouTube video of the live show, viewers flocked to the comments to demand more of the two: “I need a f— studio version of this remix,” one wrote.

Boys Noize is also listed separately as a performer at the festival, on Saturday.

Back to Radiohead: If the release of Radiohead’s Kid A Mnesia flew over your head, fear not. The compilation album mashes together the best of two albums: “Kid A” and “Amnesiac,” which came out just eight months apart. Its release in 2021 got some buzz, as members of the band began teasing it on social media and eager listeners began to think it may be a tour or even — the holy grail — a new album.

But, no, it would not be the long-awaited 10th studio album from Radiohead, its last release having been the gloomy but beautiful “A Moon Shaped Pool” in 2016. Instead they got “Kid A Mnesia,” which seemingly draws on commentary that the similar sonic palette between the two suggests “Amnesiac” may very well be the leftover of “Kid A.”

But what is a project from four years ago doing on the Coachella 2026 lineup and what is the Bunker?

Starting with the bad news, a representative of Radiohead told The Times “that the band will not physically be at Coachella” and there are “more details to come.” So, no, the band will not make its return to Indio — the band members last played the festival in 2017.

We can’t exactly pinpoint whatthe Bunker is, but it may have something to do with an immersive exhibition the band released alongside the compilation in 2021. It describes itself as “an upside-down digital/analogue universe” that draws from original artwork and recordings to “commemorate 21 years of Kid A and Amnesiac.”

This would align with Radiohead’s recent extracurriculars, as in August the band opened “This Is What You Get,” an exhibition that examined the visual identity of the band throughout its existence. It’s running at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until Jan. 11, 2026.

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