Nine Inch Nails Unveil ‘As Alive As You Need Me To Be’ From ‘TRON: Ares’ Soundtrack

Nine Inch Nails shared a new single, “As Alive As You Need Me To Be,” marking the band’s first official release in five years. The track is set for the NIN-created TRON: Ares (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), arriving on September 19 via Interscope Records.

While Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are decorated film scorers with two Oscars, three Golden Globes and a Grammy in their trophy case, the soundtrack for the third installment in the TRON franchise marks the first time the duo has soundtracked a film using the Nine Inch Nails moniker.

Reznor detailed how the TRON: Ares soundtrack came under the NIN purview in an interview with Empire. Read an excerpt below:

The ask first came from Tom MacDougall, President of Walt Disney Music, in the wake of Reznor and Ross’s work on Pixar’s Soul. “A couple of years ago, he came by the studio and said, ‘Do you think you guys would be interested in scoring Tron?’ He didn’t even finish the sentence, I was like, ‘Fuck yes, we’d want to do that’,” Reznor tells Empire. It was the next part that caught him off guard. “He said, ‘How would you feel about if it was credited as Nine Inch Nails, versus Trent and Atticus?’ We weren’t expecting to hear that question.”

As a result, the pair have channeled their band moniker fully for this one. “I’ll give a few spoilers: there’s not one second of orchestra in our score,” Reznor teases. “It sounds precise and unpleasant at times. It’s not an atonal, punishing score, but we spent a lot of time thinking about the undertones of what’s happening in the story. The concept of artificial life infused with feelings and emotions and a sense of questioning their purpose and their replaceability, their lack of soul, in some ways. We kind of riffed on that.”

The first preview of the TRON: Ares soundtrack is “As Alive As You Need Me To Be,” which arrived with a lyric video. Watch below:

Nine Inch Nails kick off the North American leg of their Peel It Back World Tour on August 6 in Oakland. Scroll down for NIN’s itinerary and ticket info.