Only a day after the announcement of a new album, a new song, and a new, huge North American tour seemed to indicate that everything within the reformed Nine Inch Nails was looking as optimistic as things within in a dark, goth-industrial band possibly can, now comes the news that Adrian Belew is already out.
The King Crimson guitarist played a crucial role in the band getting back together in the first place, with Trent Reznor saying he’d been inspired to “re-think the idea of what Nine Inch Nails could be” after the two considered collaborating on something else. Since then he’d been posting enthusiastic updates about plans and rehearsals, but somewhere something apparently went wrong: Belew posted on his Facebook that he and Reznor “both agreed it just was not working,” before deleting that status (which is still preserved on Consequence Of Sound) and going with the shorter, vaguer, “Concerning me being part of the 2013 Nine Inch Nails band: it didn't work.”
Belew says he will return to concentrating on his solo project, FLUX, presumably Reznor will return to finding another guitarist for that upcoming tour, and we’ll just return to assuming that everyone who ever leaves Nine Inch Nails does so because they’re sick of Reznor trying to bench-press them.