As fans eagerly await news of the new Nine Inch Nails, it looks like new material could still drop before the end of 2016, NME said.

The industrial metal icons previously promised to return this year when frontman Trent Reznor tweeted ‘New NIN coming in 2016. Other stuff, too’. Then, when denying rumours of a new single as a hoax, Reznor responded to fans’ calls to release music by the end of the year by saying ‘2016 is not over yet’ back in October’.

Now in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Reznor responded to his previous comments with: “Those words did come out of my mouth, didn’t they? Oh, yeah, it’s December, isn’t it? Just wait and see what happens.”

Speaking back in October, Reznor said “we’ve been working on Nine Inch Nails stuff,” referring to his collaborator Ross. “Things are going good and when we have something that we think is excellent we will unleash it upon the world.”

The award-winning soundtrack writer Reznor has also spent much of the last year working on two film scores – one for Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate change documentary Between the Flood and Peter Berg’s Boston Marathon bombing movie Patriot’s Day.

Earlier this year, Reznor paid tribute after former NIN keyboardist James Woolley died, aged 50.