12 Things Only Nine Inch Nails Fans Would Understand

6. The Tapeworm Debacle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4vH5VtViqg You know that thing where you're busy with an oil painting, and your younger nephew and his/her friends ask if they can paint too, but you know that these pointless hobgoblins are just going to wreck your creation, so you're like "Sure kids, but if we're going to play together let's rather work on something new, something magical!" You hand them a bucket of crayons and together you start hacking away at some horrid disasterpiece, knowing in your heart that ain't nobody ever going to see this mess. Yeah, that's Tapeworm. Back in the mid-nineties Trent's extended crew got all excited about toying around with some new music, but the boss quietly knew that there was no chance in hell that any of these tracks would see a NIN logo plastered on the CD case. So he made an imaginary pretend-band called Tapeworm - band, project, supergroup, call it what you will - and then, together with his playmates Danny Lohner, Charlie Clouser, Maynard James Keenan, Atticus Ross and whoever else was taking a break from binge-eating burritos and happened to stop by the studio, they set about making magic. Instead they made not-so-magic, and Trent didn't care for it. They teased us along the way with snippets of hope, studio photos and sneaky mentions, just to keep us interested. In almost a decade, all we had to show for Tapeworm was one messy live recording of Maynard's side project A Perfect Circle doing an unsolicited cover of a song called Vacant. Which then went on to become an APC track called Passive. Trent killed the worm in 2004, and we trust that it was for the best.