Whether it’s at festivals like this year’s Mad Cool in Spain or Portugal’s NOS Alive, Nine Inch Nails are often known to deliver performances worthy of “rock god” status. Still, even with their larger-than-life industrial music and the sometimes superhuman howl of Trent Reznor, they’re mortals just like us. In fact, in a recent interview with The Quietus, the frontman recounted a recent near-death experience on a US flight.

According to Reznor, he and the rest of NIN were flying from Coachella in Indio, California to Las Vegas when their plane encountered some gnarly turbulence. Fairly certain he wasn’t going to make it out alive because conditions had gotten so bad, Reznor said he found himself gripping the hand of his stranger seat mate, who he later discovered was popular dubstep producer Bassnectar.



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“Bassnectar was on the flight too. And I remember him sitting next to me and I wasn’t sure who he was at first,” Reznor recalled. “But when you have a near death experience on a plane, that changes everything. We may have been holding hands by the time we regained altitude. I never used to be conscious of it but now I’m aware that I’m in a flying tin can of potential death every time I step onto a plane.”

Thankfully NIN made it through the flight unscathed and have since given us their latest album, Bad Witch. They’re set to kick off the North American leg of their “Cold and Black Infinite Tour” in September. We only wish them smooth, uneventful flights.