Nine Inch Nails

From the valiant, if naive, industrial pop effort of Pretty Hate Machine to the furious dissatisfaction of Broken to the genuinely troubled Downward Spiral, to the mature devastation of The Fragile Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor has proven to be one of the more vital forces in popular music. Sequestered with his Macintosh, Reznor has perfected the art of projecting personal alienation, self-loathing and bitter betrayal. Reznor is a master of creating tension in silence and releasing it in explosions of industrial aggression. Having survived depression and addiction during the peak of his mid-90s acclaim, Reznor emerged sober and strangely buff with 2005's politically-inspired With Teeth and later 2007's dystopic Year Zero. Never short of ideas or opinions, he continues to be one of the most inspired -- and darkly inspiring -- musicians today.