Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize Debut Nine Inch Noize at Coachella Ahead of Collaborative Album “Halo 38”

Nine Inch Nails recently announced a new collaborative project with German producer Boys Noize just ahead of its official live debut at Coachella 2026. The project, Nine Inch Noize, is set for release on April 17th via The Null Corporation and Boysnoize Records, with the album designated as Halo 38. Nine Inch Noize made its first onstage appearance on Saturday night in the festival’s Sahara tent.

The rollout began with a billboard in Indio, California, before Nine Inch Nails formally confirmed the album through their official channels. At the time of the announcement, few additional details had been made public beyond the title, release date, and cover art, though the reveal made clear that Nine Inch Noize is being presented as a formal full-length collaboration rather than a one-off remix release or live-only experiment.

Nine Inch Noize made its official debut at Coachella on April 11th, joined in part by Mariqueen Maandig of How to Destroy Angels. The set pulled from across the Nine Inch Nails catalog while reworking the material for this new configuration, opening with “Vessel” and moving through tracks including “She’s Gone Away,” “Heresy,” “Copy of A,” “Me, I’m Not,” “Closer,” “The Warning,” and “Came Back Haunted.”

The performance also included “Parasite” from How to Destroy Angels, as well as a cover of Soft Cell’s “Memorabilia,” an apt choice for a project built around the meeting point of industrial electronics, body music, and club culture. The set closed with “As Alive as You Need Me to Be,” and the group is scheduled to return to the Sahara stage for Coachella Weekend Two on April 18th.

The connection between Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Alexander Ridha has been steadily building for some time. Boys Noize has appeared in Nine Inch Nails’ orbit as a touring collaborator of the band’s acclaimed Peel It Back Tour and has also worked with Reznor and Ross on projects outside the core band catalog. In 2024, he reworked the duo’s Challengers score for the release of Challengers [MIXED] by Boys Noize. More recently, he was also involved in the wider orbit of the Tron: Ares soundtrack campaign.

That history makes Nine Inch Noize feel less like a surprise and more like the next logical step. Reznor and Ross have spent the last several years moving fluidly between film composition, electronic textures, and the harder rhythmic machinery that has long defined Nine Inch Nails at its most club-facing. Boys Noize, meanwhile, has built his reputation on a body of work that pushes electro, techno, and distortion-heavy production into blunt, high-impact forms. Bringing those approaches together under a shared banner gives a proper name to a partnership that has already been visible in fragments.

With the album arriving on April 17th and the live debut now complete, Nine Inch Noize is positioned as a major new entry in the broader Nine Inch Nails universe. More details on the album are expected soon.

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Nine Inch Nails Official Site