Santa Monica, Ca – Nine Inch Nails, who were scheduled to perform at this year’s MTV Movie Awards on June 4, will no longer be participating in the program.
The band was slated to perform “The Hand That Feeds,” the first single from the latest Nine Inch Nails album, With Teeth.
The song has been called “a warning against blind acceptance of authority, including that of a president leading his nation to war.” (Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2005) The cancellation was a decision made by Nine Inch Nails’ leader Trent Reznor due to creative differences with MTV involving the planned performance’s use of an image of George W. Bush.
Reznor posted the following comment on his website, www.nin.com: “Nine Inch Nails will not be performing at the MTV Movie Awards as previously announced. We were set to perform ‘The Hand That Feeds’ with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop.
Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me. See you on tour this fall when we return to play in America.”
With Teeth, the fourth studio album from Nine Inch Nails, was released on May 3. It debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 200, selling over 270,000 copies in its first week.