We’ve all heard by now that Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor is busy retiring NIN’s live incarnation with a “Wave Goodbye” tour and, according to rumors, starting a family with the former frontwoman to West Indian Girl, fiancée Mariqueen Maandig. Also, he loves to hate on Chris Cornell’s Scream album via April Fool’s Day, interviews, and Twitter. Well, Trent still has time to drop a few rants on the Internet, though his management has now forbidden questions on “the state of the industry.”

“I really have no personal issue with Chris [Cornell] at all,” Reznor told Eye Weekly’s Liisa Ladouceur. “We were on [Interscope]. And I have had Jimmy Iovine, the president of that label, come up to me on every record from With Teeth onwards saying I should do some sort of urban thing — it was Timbaland for a while, then it was Pharrell for a while — because ‘that’s how you sell records.’ The idea seemed so preposterous and insulting.”

Reznor goes on to insist that his gripes with Cornell’s album have nothing to do with working with hip-hop producers, as he says making a record with Dr. Dre “would be kind of cool,” but the impetus behind Cornell’s foray into dance/rock was, according to Trent, to pander for radio play.

Though his manager was probably biting his nails in the wings, pondering cutting off the lights, Reznor offered one unprompted comment on the previously off-limits music industry topic: “If I have one major fight in the world of the music business, it’s trying to keep art first and commerce second.”

Fair enough, Trent. You’re doing just fine at both thus far. Now just steer clear of Virgin America and it’ll be okay.

I’m starting to lose track of all these “Trent Reznor dissed” headlines, so that’s a good sign we should retire that type of post for a bit. That is, of course, unless one of the victims of a Reznor tongue-lashing decides to speak up. And here we go:

When we posted Reznor’s recent statement that he’d “never want to be Gene Simmons, an old man who puts on makeup to entertain kids, like a clown going to work,” the comments got pretty heated, with many NIN and KISS fans pointing out that Reznor has cited Simmons and KISS as major influences in the past. Simmons has now responded to Reznor’s diss with a similar reaction after being asked about it by a fan in the “Letters From Fans” section of his site. Here’s his full response:

No worries. Trent grew up on KISS and cut his teeth on our toons. When he was recording Downward Spiral, he had two action figures on his mix console - Jesus and Gene Simmons.

Once you’re a self confessed heroin addict, who used the stuff for years, you don’t look at life the way the rest of us do…I’m told.

We all wish him well.

Trent Reznor may be moving on from the live incarnation of Nine Inch Nails, but his fiancée Mariqueen Maandig is leaving her band altogether. In a news post on the official West Indian Girl site (via LA Times), the band first made the announcement:

from the very very sad and unfortunate department we announce that west indian girl and mariqueen have parted ways. due to her recent life and priority changes she will no longer be part of our group. we wish her nothing but the best as she embarks on a new chapter of her new life outside of this band. she sacrificed a lot over the years and her loyalty and professionalism to this family will sorely be missed. she will, however, always remain in our hearts, thoughts and prayers. thank you q, we love and miss you.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Reznor is planning to give Maandig the Saul Williams treatment, producing and releasing a solo record, or perhaps the pair will become a kind of goth Sonny and Cher.

The one thing we do know is that their future projects won’t involve Twitter, but that isn’t true for Maandig’s former band. “Female singer needed - please repost,” they tweeted only hours ago.

And the feud rages on. We’ve mentioned Trent Reznor’s calling his former partner in crime a “dopey clown” a couple of times now, and at long last Marilyn Manson himself has joined the fray with some barbs of his own.

The Herald Sun quotes Manson as saying, “Since I’ve known Trent he’s always let his jealousy and bitterness for other people get in the way. I’m not talking about me — I sat back and watched him be jealous of Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan and a lot of other musicians in the past. I just don’t find the time to do that. I stopped thinking about him a while back, but I know that every day I have a song played that money will go to him, forever.”

Seems kind of cyclical to me – remember their falling-out in the late nineties and Nine Inch Nails’ subsequent anthem “Starfuckers, Inc.,” which was, depending on the article, a jab at Manson? I do. Just saying.

Not all ties are severed, though. “As long as I have a record deal it will be attached to him financially. In the words of his own song, you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you — you should take that hand and punch yourself in the face.”

Well, I had a feeling that Nine Inch Nails’ recently loose-lipped front man Trent Reznor wouldn’t just quit Twitter without a public explanation and sure enough, we’ve got one. Reznor checked in recently with fans at his favorite rant destination: the official NIN.com forum.

“Around the time news broke of my engagement, a faction of troublemakers showed up whose sole intent was to disrupt, harass, insult and incite,” Reznor wrote of his falling out of love with Twitter’s novel way of keeping in touch with the NIN fan base. He goes on to say that blocking Twitter @haters doesn’t really do the trick, as it still leaves them a forum for contaminating the benevolent portion of NIN followers. What’s more, his inquiries on the matter to the Twitter staff were only met with rebuffs, such as “yeah, um, we’re thinking about doing something about that - people are complaining.”

The straw that broke the Prince of Darkness’ back, however, was when one person, that Reznor calls “a lonely, obsessed, delusional, bitter ‘fan’ who recently posted how the celebrity she’d most like to date is ME,” tweeted insensitive comments at the sister of Eric De La Cruz, a man who recently passed away after Reznor raised almost one million dollars in the hopes of saving his life.

“It depresses me to think my art and life’s work can attract this kind of scum,” Reznor said, adding later, “If that was your intention you trolling, cowardly pigs - you’ve succeeded.” [Insert “March of the Pigs” joke here]

Love him or hate him, Reznor’s an interesting guy and it is depressing that some anonymous person took advantage of his recent good will. Going forward, I hope Twitter can attract more @TrentReznors and less of these kind of folks, but I wouldn’t put money on it.

So here’s the rundown: Reznor was, for many years, a mysterious figure. Then came Twitter. Following news of Reznor’s engagement, he received a bevy of malicious @messages, so he decided to quit “online communities.”  As it turned out, he just couldn’t quit the Internet completely, and came back, tweeting with a vengeance (“And f*ck you, trolls. I’ll tweet if I feel like it.”). Our latest update? Reznor CAN quit the Internet, after all, having deleted his Twitter account in full; fiancée Mariqueen Maandig has followed suit, though her band isn’t ready to dump their followers just yet.

To be fair, Reznor and Maandig have had their share of harassment via Twitter, as documented here and here, but maybe the former Prince of Darkness just doesn’t have that ol’ web 2.0 thick skin.

I was honestly going to take a break from Trent Reznor posts today, but the man’s a better quote machine than Iggy Pop these days. Remember that pseudo how-to for struggling artists Reznor posted on NIN.com recently? As you could imagine, the whole thing caused quite a stir, prompting TopSpin’s Ian Rogers to post a response to the concerns of a few fans and Reznor to amend the original rant.

The interesting bit to me is that Reznor is warning artists to steer clear of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want scheme. Sure, he has ranted about his fellow digital revolutionaries before, calling their offer “a bait and switch to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream,” but this time he is more specific about the danger of letting fans choose the value of your music. Here’s the full excerpt:

Pay-what-you-want model

This is where you offer tracks or albums for a user-determined price. I hate this concept, and here’s why. Some have argued that giving music away free devalues music. I disagree. Asking people what they think music is worth devalues music. Don’t believe me? Write and record something you really believe is great and release it to the public as a “pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth” model and then let’s talk. Read a BB entry from a “fan” rationalizing why your whole album is worth 50 cents because he only likes 5 songs on it. Trust me on this one - you will be disappointed, disheartened and find yourself resenting a faction of your audience. This is your art! This is your life! It has a value and you the artist are not putting that power in the hands of the audience - doing so creates a dangerous perception issue. If the FEE you are charging is zero, you are not empowering the fan to say this is only worth an insultingly low monetary value. Don’t be misled by Radiohead’s In Rainbows stunt. That works one time for one band once - and you are not Radiohead.