Nine Inch Nails Bassist Eric Avery announced on Facebook that he has quit the band and won't be joining their planned 2013-14 tour.

Avery, who was a founding member of Jane’s Addiction before coming the Nine Inch Nails bassist, just came off a tour with the Shirley Manson-led 90s band Garbage and says he doesn’t feel like he could commit to being on the road for another year and a half.

His decision to leave Nine Inch Nails was posted on the social network yesterday, “It's with very mixed emotions I tell you all that I'm pulling out of NIN. I know. Its been a tough call and I don't know if it's the right one. But I really want to focus on my musical life here in LA, on film work in particular. As the tour dates kept growing… I just got overwhelmed. I just got home from a year of heavy travel with Garbage, the idea of leaving town for another year and a half, and with all the intensity that Nails demands… fortunately my friend Trent understands all this and appreciated my pulling the plug now instead of deep into 2013 and 14. Go get 'em gentlemen.”

Nine Inch Nails are set to play a festival tour starting this summer. NIN is slated to play Lollapalooza in Chicago, Jay-Z’s Made in America Festival in Philadelphia and UK dates at the Reading and Leeds Festivals this August. More tour dates are still to be announced.

Lead vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Trent Reznor recently told New Music Express that NIN have been busy in the studio with Adrian Belew, who recently joined NIN and was the guitarist for King Krimson, David Bowie and Peter Gabriel, among others. NIN also recently added Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv to the mix. The band has been working on two new songs, which they plan to perform live at the festivals. Reznor said, "There isn't any new material to play except from a couple of tracks Adrian and I started experimenting on that were intended to go on a greatest hits record. We decided to push that back to 2014, and there's no new record scheduled at this point."

Reznor also told the British rock magazine that fans should expect sonic surprises at NIN live shows, "The intention is to reconstruct songs based on this new instrumentation and only play songs we as a band feel good about. With Nine Inch Nails last time, I felt that I'd explored that kind of bludgeoning rock thing in a lot of different ways, like I'd done everything I could do with that format."

It’s been almost four years since Reznor put Nine Inch Nails on hiatus following their Wave Goodbye Tour.

by Tony Sokol