Interscope Records releases the soundtrack to Tron Ares by Nine Inch Nails, inlcuding the single “As Alive As You Need Me To Be”, nearly a month before the movie itself debuts. 
Nothing with Tron as a franchise happens on a level that makes immediate sense. Sequels happen at least a decade and a half, if not longer, after the previous movie. Any attempt at a small-screen adaptation is likely to have its life cut short to redirect those resources toward a larger, guaranteed-income franchise under the same studio roof. Video games were a marketing driver for the first film; music seems to be the marketing driver for the sequels, with Daft Punk’s participation stoking excitement for Tron Legacy and… Nine Inch Nails doing the same for Tron: Ares? Who saw that coming?
It’s not that NIN is in anyway underqualified; Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have been doing stellar work in the film scoring field for years, but never under their band name. They might have done the same here, except that Disney brass specifically wanted a Nine Inch Nails album attached to the third movie in the series, almost certainly for marketing purposes, but also to lend some edginess to a franchise that previously seemed squeaky-clean. Writing this soundtrack review in real time as it drops, a month before the movie’s premiere, I will confess that I’m already plenty on edge because the whole thing revolves around Jared Leto, of whose work and off-screen behavior I’m not a big fan. To be honest, it was the lead single from the soundtrack album that made me think the whole thing might not be a cinematic trash fire.
The lead single in question, “As Alive As You Need Me To Be”, is a pretty potent marketing shot across the bow. Attention-getting, catchy as hell, and loaded down with the signature sound that most people expect of Nine Inch Nails (though the band’s non-soundtrack work is actually quite diverse), it’s compulsive listening, and you can immediately tell that NIN is doing the same heavy lifting for this movie that Daft Punk did for its predecessor. But there’s more to it than just that song – yet, at the same time, that one song dominates the entire album as a motif underpinning the entire score. The bassline from “As Alive As You Need Me To Be” recurs throughout the score – not in every track, but, judging by how often it does come up, a lot of it and probably during the action setpieces.
The opening two tracks, “Init” and “Forked Reality”, are standalone pieces without a trace of that song, and they establish NIN’s electronica cred for scoring a Tron movie, if anyone still harbored any doubts. Other tracks that stray from the main theme include much more sedate tracks like “Echoes” and “Still Remains” leaning less on electronic sounds and more on piano. The less-doom-laden feel also spreads to another song, “Who Wants To Live Forever?”, a Reznor/Judeline vocal duet over a backing track that mixes piano and electronics. (This song later appears in instrumental form as the shorter track “No Going Back”.)
IF you’re wanting “As Alive As You Need Me To Be” in instrumental form, that’s all over the rest of the album – it’s very prominently the basis of such tracks as “Infiltrator” and “Target Identified”; elements of the song appear elsewhere. Another song, “Shadow Over Me”, closes out the album, also borrowing elements of “As Alive” but taking them in a divergent melodic direction; it also appears in instrumental form as the backbone of “New Directive”. But there’s no mistaking “As Alive” as the template for most of the score and songs.
While it remains to be seen how well the music fits the movie, it’s hard not to regard it as a marketing masterstroke. It’s brought attention to a movie that might otherwise have been buried under the stigma of being the third in an apparently ongoing series (though one can be forgiven for losing track of the “ongoing” in the decades-long pauses in the franchise), and it’s setting a high bar for whatever comes next – you know, whoever’s at the top of the electronic music heap in about 15 years or so. In the meantime, this is an album that – whether you’re there for the songs or the score – stands up to repeated listening.
- Init (02:08)
- Forked Reality (01:51)
- As Alive As You Need Me To Be (03:57)
- Echoes (03:46)
- This Changes Everything (03:00)
- In The Image Of (01:33)
- I Know You Can Feel It (05:22)
- Permanence (01:29)
- Infiltrator (02:47)
- 100% Expendable (03:55)
- Still Remains (01:55)
- Who Wants To Live Forever? (05:51)
- Building Better Worlds (02:12)
- Target Identified (03:24)
- Daemonize (05:10)
- Empathetic Response (02:10)
- What Have You Done? (02:14)
- A Question Of Trust (01:21)
- Ghost In The Machine (01:30)
- No Going Back (01:55)
- Nemesis (01:46)
- New Directive (02:46)
- Out In The World (01:06)
- Shadow Over Me (03:55)
Released by: Interscope
Release date: 2025
Total running time: 1:07:02
2025 music review by Earl Green