1994 was the year Trent Reznor released The Downward Spiral, an unsettling opus that details one man's descent to near self-destruction. It was also the year Toad the Wet Sprocket had a Top Ten hit, O.J. Simpson was chased on TV and Kurt Cobain committed suicide. It was only five years ago, but pop music has the life span of a Sea Monkey — maybe even shorter. Consider who shared the bill with Nine Inch Nails at Woodstock '94: Deee-Lite, the Spin Doctors, Porno for Pyros, Arrested Development and Jackyl. "At the Woodstock I did," Reznor recalls, "all you heard about was the Pepsi logo on the fucking bird thing and how it was all about money. Bands were getting shit-canned for doing it for money. Did anybody mention money this year?"

In the last five years, rock music, according to Trent Reznor, "has taken a big shit." It is a period he's glad to have missed. All the while he's been lying in wait, hidden away like a Brazilian wood tick on the underside of a branch. Sure, he put his hand to a few things: producing the soundtracks to David Lynch's Lost Highway and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, co-producing Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar and compiling Closure, a Nine Inch Nails video collection and tour diary. While these projects only made his fans rabid for a Nine Inch Nails album, he remained the Invisible Man. "All I really want to know," lamented a fan recently on a NIN Web site, "is, When will they tour? I've never seen Trent in real life." Don't worry, Reznor is ready now. It just took some time. First he needed to disappear. And then he found that reappearing wasn't so easy. Reznor, adept at most things he puts his mind to, had disappeared very, very well.