Nine Inch Nails’ TRON: Ares feels like a full-on statement of intent. Dropping a few weeks before the film’s release, the 24-track album is the first time Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have officially put the NIN name on a film score. Right from the start, the result appears like a bold mix of cinematic sweep and industrial edge.
Unlike Wendy Carlos’s orchestral-electronic blend in the original TRON (1982) or Daft Punk’s polished, symphonic synths in TRON: Legacy, TRON: Ares takes a much darker turn. There is no place for a sweeping orchestra in this one. This score leans on pulsing synths, distorted textures, and eerie melodies. Reznor and Ross filter the franchise’s digital dystopia through darkwave, techno, and industrial rock, creating a sound that feels more suffocating than utopian, and being more about inner tension than escape.
The lead single, As Alive as You Need Me to Be, is a blast of mid-2000s NIN. It’s a gear-grinding anthem that harks back to the With Teeth era, with Reznor’s classic explorations of power, submission, and control front and center. The vocoder-heavy refrain gives it an eerie, otherworldly tone and manages to hit as something both familiar and threatening, serving as a bridge between NIN’s past and the digital future of TRON.
Across the album, Reznor and Ross’s growth as film composers is impossible to miss. Their film work has sharpened their skill at stirring emotion through minimalism. A similar sensibility flows through TRON: Ares with many instances drenched in ambient tension and synthetic melancholy, blurring the line between cinematic abstraction and a fully realized album you can lose yourself in.
Releasing the album ahead of the film lets listeners experience the music on its own terms. Without visuals to guide them, the audience is free to make the most of the emotional highs and lows, and digital worlds at which the music hints. At the same time, the album taps into the current darkwave revival, echoing the slinky basslines and icy synths making waves in the genre today, but all filtered through NIN’s unmistakably intense lens.
TRON: Ares proves that Nine Inch Nails can't lose their edge. The album captures the spirit of TRON, the quest for identity, and the constant back and forth between man and machine.
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Nine Inch Nails
Video directed by Maxime Quoilin
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