Nine Inch Nails Just Dropped the Tron: Ares Soundtrack — Listen Now
Nine Inch Nails plug back into the Grid with Tron: Ares, a hypnotic techno-synth surge landing five years after their last outing—and it’s available now.
Tron: Ares just pulled a move I did not have on my 2025 bingo card: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are scoring the movie, and the soundtrack also packs official new Nine Inch Nails music. Yes, NIN is back on a new release, and yes, it fits the neon-synth vibe you want from Tron. The album is out now and available on the band’s official online store.
Wait, NIN is back-back?
Reznor and Ross have basically lived in Film Composer World for a while, staying away from the traditional album-and-tour grind. Revolver notes this marks Nine Inch Nails’ first official release in five years, following 2020’s twin projects, Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts, which the band dropped as free downloads that March.
"What we are looking for [from film] is the collaborative experience with interesting people. We have not gotten that from the music world necessarily, for our own choice."
"The culture of the music world sucks."
That’s Reznor telling IndieWire how they ended up so comfortable in film. Kind of wild, then, that a Disney sci-fi sequel is what brings official NIN music roaring back.
Score vs. soundtrack, and why Tron is a good fit
Quick decoder: Reznor and Ross are composing the score. The soundtrack also features new, official Nine Inch Nails tracks. So you are getting the atmospheric film cues and some proper NIN in the same package. The franchise has a history of going all-in on synth-driven world-building — Tron: Legacy famously had Daft Punk score it — and NIN slides into that lane with a darker, synth-rock pulse and Reznor’s unmistakable vocals.
What is Tron: Ares actually about?
The movie follows Ares, a highly advanced Program sent from the digital realm into the real world on a dangerous mission — essentially humanity’s first face-to-face with A.I. beings. Jared Leto is playing Ares. Boiled down: think a video game entity crossing over to Earth, and all the chaos that implies.
Who is making this thing?
- Director: Joachim Ronning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales)
- Writers: Jesse Wigutow and Jack Thorne
- Cast: Jared Leto (Morbius), Cameron Monaghan (Gotham), Evan Peters (Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), Greta Lee (Past Lives), Sarah Desjardins (Yellowjackets), Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), Hasan Minhaj (No Hard Feelings), Arturo Castro (Road House), Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim), and returning Tron star Jeff Bridges
- Producers: Sean Bailey, Jeffrey Silver, Justin Springer, Jared Leto, Emma Ludbrook, Steven Lisberger
- Executive Producer: Russell Allen
Bottom line: the Tron: Ares soundtrack with new Nine Inch Nails music is out now, and it sounds like the right kind of electric for this universe. If you have been waiting to hear Reznor’s voice cut through a wall of synths again, welcome back to the Grid.