Nine Inch Nails have been around for nearly 40 years, but put on a concert like they are still trying to prove themselves. Trent Reznor isn't going to cheat you, after all. He knows fans will sing along to many of the tracks, but he performs them as if you've never heard them before.
That is partly because when you go to see NIN in concert, the songs are not going to always sound exactly like they do on a studio album. This means the tunes have a new life live, and the band is never going to get tired of playing them.
While Reznor and Nine Inch Nails are Industrial gods, there is enough nuance where the machinery works just as well in different ways. For instance, at a recent show in Nashville, TN (and likely everywhere else you will see the band), Boys Noize, the opening musical artist and sometimes collaborator with NIN, joined in on four songs and helped re-work them.
Nine Inch Nails delivers Nashville a brilliant and versatile show
"Closer," for instance, was still brilliant and retained its original bones, but the rendition was slightly more electronic and vibrant. There is more than a touch of Depeche Mode influence with Nine Inch Nails, and it shines through on some of the songs live.
But make no mistake that Reznor, Atticus Ross (Reznor's long-time writing partner), guitarist Robin Finck, bassist Alessandro Cortini, and drummer Josh Freese still know how to out-right rock. There is no denying the punk involved in tracks such as "Burn," and the band delivers the song with ferocity and high-end energy.
Two aspects besides the excellence of the music set the Nine Inch Nails tour apart. One is the light show, and the other is how the stages are set up.
That's correct: Stages. In Nashville, the main stage was set at one end of Bridgestone Arena, but the other, smaller one was in the middle of the floor. This is where the show begins with Trent Reznor alone playing "Right Where It Belongs," a quiet and emotional tune. Instead of blasting fans with noise from the beginning, NIN shows work more as an opera.
After three songs on the B-stage, Reznor and the others who joined him at the beginning of the concert run to the main stage, where the full band plays. There is very little break between the B-stage and the main stage, and that means the momentum of the show never ceases. It constantly builds.
The light show is also brilliant, as it has always been with NIN concerts. As Jack Black's Dewey Finn says in School of Rock, no great rock show is complete without a great light show, and Reznor is too much of a full artist, not just a musical one, not to have every part of the concert be elite.
The lighting of the show doesn't tell its own story, but augments the music. This is exactly how it should work, of course, but many bands fail to do so.
As always, Nine Inch Nails end the concert with "Hurt," but after a blistering rendition of "Head Like a Hole." The two songs coupled together are the yin and yang of what makes NIN timeless, especially live. It isn't the volume that matters but the raw art of it all, and it is magical.