Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize Team Up for Full Album as Nine Inch Noize

Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize are making it official. The industrial icons and the German electronic producer have announced a full collaborative album under the name Nine Inch Noize, set to land on April 17, 2026. And yes — it's tagged as HALO 38, meaning this isn't some loosie side project. It's canon.

The announcement came via Instagram on April 8, days before the duo is set to take the Sahara stage at Coachella on Saturday, April 11. A billboard promoting the project has already popped up on the road into Indio, California, which is exactly the kind of move that gets the timeline talking.

None of this comes out of nowhere. Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Boys Noize have been tightening their creative bond through soundtrack work over the past couple of years, most notably on the scores for Challengers and TRON: Ares. Those collaborations clearly planted the seeds for something bigger. According to NME, Nine Inch Nails brought Boys Noize in to "deconstruct and subsequently reimagine" Reznor and Ross's material — a description that suggests this won't just be NIN tracks with a four-on-the-floor kick slapped underneath.

For anyone keeping score, the HALO designation matters. NIN's numbered release system stretches back to 1989's Pretty Hate Machine, and every entry — albums, EPs, remix collections — carries real weight in the band's catalog. Slapping HALO 38 on this record signals that Reznor views Nine Inch Noize as a legitimate extension of his body of work, not a DJ remix cash-in.

“Slapping HALO 38 on this record signals that Reznor views Nine Inch Noize as a legitimate extension of his body of work, not a DJ remix cash-in.”

The timing is sharp, too. Playing Coachella under the Nine Inch Noize banner essentially turns their Saturday set into a live album preview, building anticipation across a festival weekend before the record drops the following Friday. It's the kind of rollout that collapses the gap between event and release in a way that feels increasingly common but rarely this cleanly executed.

The big question now is what this thing actually sounds like. Reznor's recent work has leaned heavily into scoring and ambient texture, while Boys Noize has spent two decades on dancefloors that run from electro to techno to rave. The overlap between those worlds is obvious on paper, but the specifics — how industrial grit meets club energy across a full-length record — could go in a dozen directions.

Expect more details to surface around Coachella weekend, and keep an eye on that Sahara stage set for the first real taste of what HALO 38 has in store.