Live and Cold and Black and Infinite - Four Nights of NIN in NYC

Highlights

I bitch...so...hard...about Nine Inch Nails. I believe I've explained before that the reason I bitch so hard is because I know what Trent Reznor is capable of and, when he doesn't live up to the standards that he himself has set, I get disappointed. It doesn't come from a place of anger, it comes from a place of confusion. "Trent...you did such great things here, why aren't you doing great things here?"
That is why, when I saw NIN back in 2014 back-to-back and they performed the same set on both nights, I bitched. Hard.
Three years and two EPs later, they played Panorama and then a secret show at Webster Hall, again, back-to-back. Although the sets were different from one another, I still recall one of my favorite moments being that, on that second night, they didn't play "The Hand That Feeds". Again: one of my favorite moments of seeing Nine Inch Nails live...was the absence of a song. That is not right.
A year and one more EP* after that, NIN set out on their Cold and Black and Infinite tour. Right before that though, they did a small run of festival shows with a pretty standard set, except for three tracks off the new EP to spice things up.
Based on that festival run, the fact that they were playing for festival crowds and not "real" Nine Inch Nails fans, the fact that it wasn't a named tour, and the "Physical World" pre-sale event, I knew there would be something special about CBI. I did not know what and that's how I liked it.
At the aforementioned pre-sale event, Chris and I bought tickets to both shows at Radio City Music Hall. When the band announced two more back-to-back nights at Brooklyn's Kings Theatre, I decided to go for the second night and easily scored GA tickets. After that second Radio City Music Hall show, we debated and then bought tickets to the third show, thus setting ourselves up for four Nine Inch Nails shows in five days.
As I've already reviewed each night individually (see below), I'll just list some things I'll never forget.

• I saw "The Perfect Drug", my hands-down favorite Nine Inch Nails song, live, twice, played exactly as it should be, with a drummer who can hit every single beat and somehow find a way to instill the track with even more energy.

• I was lucky enough to see "Now I'm Nothing" transition into "Terrible Lie"**

• I heard all of Broken, a formative album for me, played front to back, including the cheeky hidden tracks.

• Additional highlights included: "Mr. Self Destruct", "This Isn't The Place", two thirds of Bad Witch, "Gave Up" (not that unique, but they fucking brought it this time around), "All The Love In The World", TDTWWA, "Burn", "La Mer", "The Becoming", "Burning Bright (Field On Fire)", "Happiness In Slavery", "Find My Way", "I Do Not Want This". "Parasite", "The Background World"

I'm sure the next thing from Reznor will let me down in some way, because that's who I am, but I'm going to keep this experience with me. I walked out of each night completely satisfied and genuinely excited at what was coming next. Did I leave at the start of "Hurt" on those final two nights? Yes. Because a. I've seen it at every Nine Inch Nails show but one, and b. Kings Theatre is fucking MILES from my home and getting a car when there's 5000 people out front as opposed to 20 is a lot harder.*** Aside from that, yeah, these shows were something special. Even if everything is lazy and boring and triple H from here on out, these shows happened and I was there.

Here are reviews from the specific nights of the tour, along with links to photo and video galleries.

Radio City Music Hall [Night 1]
Radio City Music Hall [Night 2]
Kings Theatre [Night 1]
Kings Theatre [Night 2]


* Bad Witch is an EP. Stop. Shut up. It is.

** The only downside being that I can never hear TL again without that intro.

*** Although I did feel like a parent sneaking out of his kid's school play for some really odd reason...