
On this day, 16 years ago, Nine Inch Nails released 'The Hands That Feeds' single
On 28 March 2005 Nine Inch Nails released ‘The Hand That Feeds’ as the lead single from their fourth studio album, With Teeth (2005). It is the highest charting song by Nine Inch Nails on all charts except for U.S. Modern Rock Tracks, where it stayed at number one for five weeks, because the single that followed, "Only", stayed at number one for two more weeks (non-consecutively).
It is, to date, Nine Inch Nails' only single to hit the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart, as well as their highest-charting single on the U.S. Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, peaking at number two.
NIN was due to play this song at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, but dropped out due to conflicts between Trent Reznor and MTV concerning the band's plan to incorporate an image of George W. Bush into the performance. An announcement made by Trent Reznor on the NIN website on 26 May stated:
"Nine Inch Nails will not be performing at the MTV Movie Awards as previously announced. We were set to perform 'The Hand That Feeds' with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop. Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me. See you on tour this fall when we return to play in America."
The following day, MTV stated:
"While we respect Nine Inch Nails' point of view, we were uncomfortable with their performance being built around a partisan political statement. When we discussed our discomfort with the band, their choice was to unfortunately pull out of the Movie Awards."
The song was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance for the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in 2006.
The Hand That Feeds (Lyrics)
You're keeping in step
In the line
Got your chin held high and you feel just fine
'cause you do
What you're told
But inside your heart it is black and it's hollow and it's cold
Just how deep do you believe?
Will you bite the hand that feeds?
Will you chew until it bleeds?
Can you get up off your knees?
Are you brave enough to see?
Do you wanna change it?
What if this whole crusade's a charade
And behind it all there's a price to be paid
For the blood on which we dine
Justified in the name of the holy and the divine
Just how deep do you believe?
Will you bite the hand that feeds?
Will you chew until it bleeds?
Can you get up off your knees?
Are you brave enough to see?
Do you wanna change it?
So naive
I keep holding on to what I wanna believe
I can see
But I keep holding on and on and on and on
Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?
Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?
Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?
Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?
Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?
Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?
Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?
Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?
Chicago-based industrial rock band Nuclear Sun has released a new single/visualizer clip covering the iconic NINE INCH NAILS hit, "Head Like A Hole." The track appears on NUCLEAR SUN's new tribute release, Couldn't Have Said It Better Vol. 1,
Wet Skin is an exercise in secrecy and lurid confession; electronic music inspired by the emotional hangovers of digitally mediated sexual encounters (and non-encounters).
Each song on the debut album from Wet Skin is a vignette of isolation and frustration against the market's ethos of constant connection and overbearing permission to indulge. Pornography at the limits of capitalism and cybernetics; choosing a date reduced to a casual fusion of shopping and gaming. Songs like "Sex Negative" offer a meta-thematic confrontation with the proto-incel themes of some industrial music. Other tracks such as "I Hate What You Like" are less heady, airing a rageful annoyance at the constant push-pull between enlightened criticism and 'just letting people like things’.
Musically, "Animal God" maps out a space between the slinking mid-tempo grind of "Concrete Jungle"-era DIVE and the guilt ballads of "Pretty Hate Machine"-era Nine Inch Nails. Drawing on themes from Michael Mann's 1986 masterpiece "Manhunter," the speaker in all six original songs tries to face up to the disturbing (and increasingly forgotten) reality that we're more like the monsters we deplore than we'd usually care to admit. Occupying an underworld of shadowy, whispering ambiguity the track list plays like an unearthed chest of lost disclosures.
Disorientation hangs over every word in "Hide From The Light", an intimate, depressive, polar bookend to the album's detached, hedonistic opener "Exposure". The menacing cover of Red 7's "Heartbeat" casts the original song's portrayal of romantic desire in an even more grim light than when it appeared in the end credits of “Manhunter”.
The album is rounded out by eviscerating remixes from Statiqbloom & SARIN. Released as 50 limited edition cassettes + digital on April 2nd, 2021.

Industrial/Rock Band DEADLIGHT HOLIDAY Unleash Their New Single, 'Blood And Body'
Michigan-based industrial/rock band DEADLIGHT HOLIDAY have unleashed their highly-anticipated new single, "Blood And Body." The visualizer made its premiere on March 17th at ReGen Magazine HERE:
The single also appears with a remix version from ANGELSPIT and is available NOW via Bandcamp.
"The lyrics draw from American culture, and our collective cognitive dissonance towards the problems we all help create as a humans. I don't think it's our job as musicians to solve or answer anything, but rather to call attention to subject matter, and create a 'question mark' of sorts for people to make up their own mind. "
For fans of: ORGY, KMFDM & NINE INCH NAILS
Released before In Absentia signed contract with Hard Records in 1993, Charnel House Chatterbox was a sort of "greatest hits" demo compilation In Absentia released in 1992, containing the most popular tracks from previous demo tapes and live shows. Today the cassette album is regarded as a 'cult' item from the early Danish EBM scene.
At a recent visit to the archives of In Absentia the original DAT tape with the album showed up. As the years have been kind to the tape and the songs sounded just as crisp as when it was recorded back then (well, mind that it WAS lo-fi production at the time) In Absentia decided to digitalize it and give it a remaster. The result is now here for you to re-visit 1992 and the era of old school EBM and electro punk in all its lo-fi glory!
inabsentiadk.bandcamp.com/album/charnel-house-chatterbox-2021-remaster