Well, I just saw Nine Inch Nails play all of Broken in sequence. If that weren’t enough, they whipped out their cover of How To Destroy Angels’ “Parasite”, “Me, I’m Not” from Year Zero, and “The Background World”, the phenomenal closer from last year’s Add Violence. Somehow, after three unique and surprising sets, Trent motherfucking Reznor keeps things interesting. In four nights, I witnessed Nine Inch Nails play 53 unique songs, including over a dozen I’d never seen performed live, one of which, “The Perfect Drug”, has been my favorite song of theirs since its release over twenty years ago.
Back in 2009, NIN opened for Jane’s Addiction on the NIN|JA tour, then, deciding things were a bit too restricted between shortened set times and the daylight sapping the drama from their performances, they embarked on their Wave Goodbye tour. As far as production and spectacle, this was their most attic set of shows. There were no elaborate lighting rigs or interactive LED panels…not even a scrim on which to project abstract colors and shapes: just the band and an insane rotation of songs. Catching them four times in three months, I saw most of The Slip, a good chunk of The Fragile, and almost all of The Downward Spiral, but the four nights of the Cold and Black and Infinite tour blew those away. The depth of the deep cuts, the breadth of the material covered was literally astonishing at times. The only sure thing every night was “Head Like A Hole” denoting the end of the first set and “Hurt” closing things out*.
The only complaint any true fan of Nine Inch Nails could have about this tour is that they didn’t see enough of it. As I said when Bad Witch came out earlier this year, if Reznor did decide to call it quits after that album and after this tour, I could not be more satisfied with what he’s done and with what I’ve seen.
* Or intimating it was safe to leave if anyone wanted to beat the traffic.
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