Biffy Clyro have responded to comments made by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor after he insulted the band at Reading Festival, accusing the US frontman of having “basically spat his dummy out”.

Reznor lashed out at Reading Festival promoters and Biffy Clyro, saying they “fucked us” on the band’s production prior to their performance directly before the Scottish headliners. This afternoon before Nine Inch Nails were due to play, Reznor tweeted about the performance, writing “Should be an unusual show tonight at Reading…the lying promoter and the band following us (whoever the fuck they are) fucked us on our production.”

Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil has now responded to Reznor’s claims, stating that, “He basically spat his dummy out.” He added: “Nine Inch Nails are a huge band and they’ve been headlining loads of festivals everywhere and I think their manager or someone told him they weren’t headlining Reading and Leeds, God forbid, and he decided to take it out on us.”


Speaking to Faster Louder, Neil continued: “He played with us on the Friday night and there was no problem. He didn’t care about the Leeds bands obviously and he knew damn fine who we were, so I think he was just being obnoxious.”

Earlier this year, Reznor told NME that his band’s brand new stage show, inspired by Talking Heads‘ 1983 Stop Making Sense tour, was redesigned from scratch to work outdoors. “In terms of physical components, it’s actually low-tech,” he said.

Reading and Leeds Festival boss Melvin Benn also responded to Reznor’s tweets, saying: “The truth is there’s no truth in the statement. The contract hasn’t changed since they signed up to it.” Asked if Reznor was perhaps feeling a bit sore about playing before a band he hadn’t heard of, he said, “I couldn’t possibly comment.”

Check out our gallery of all the best photos from Reading and Leeds Festival 2013