Opposites attract at Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction concert (Review)

Thursday, June 11, 2009

By Scott Mervis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It was Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction who was screaming, "nothing's shocking!" but he didn't see what was going on Wednesday night in Section P, Row N at the Post-Gazette Pavilion.

There stood an elderly, white-haired man wearing a Nine Inch Nails cap and a wide grin, rocking back and forth, clapping along -- too slow for the beat -- for the entire 90 minutes of that band's bruising set as if he were watching the Beach Boys or maybe the church choir.

He's more than a half-century too old to like NIN, but I suppose it's different when it's Trent Reznor's grandfather. Ninety-eight-year-old Bill Clark accompanied Reznor's mom and several other relatives to the show, all looking far too kind and wholesome to have raised the most tortured artist of his generation.

It was part concert, part Freudian curiosity to watch the Mercer native scream lines like "Don't you tell me how I feel/You don't know just how I feel!" in the general vicinity of his mom.

The NIN/JA tour was a double reunion, marking the return of the original Jane's Addiction, while pairing the two principals of the maiden Lollapalooza, which never darkened our door. If you closed your eyes, it was very much like Lolla 91. If you opened them, you saw a crowd of bulkier 35- to 40-year-olds with cameras, cell phones and beers who weren't going to mosh and fight like they did when they were 17, which alters the energy substantially. No one really was getting much wilder than Mr. Clark.

Despite being forever linked by the culture, NIN and Jane's Addiction are worlds apart spiritually and aesthetically. NIN played first, sacrificing some of its vampiric aura to the daylight still surrounding the venue. Reznor, in black leather pants and bulging muscles, was grinding out his gothic industrial metal on a colorless, foggy stage filled with flashing strobes so intense he dared you to look. He ventured from guitar to keyboard to synthesizer, creating the favored headphone music of a serial killer -- a vast sonic range from pretty, brooding atmosphere to stabbing, bludgeoning hardcore.

The set was spiked with scorchers like "March of the Pigs," "Head Like a Hole" and "I'm Afraid of Americans," where Reznor and Robin Finck's guitars sounded like jackhammers, and balanced with painful slow-burns like "The Becoming" and "The Fragile," which called for acoustic guitar or piano.

Sixteen songs in, Reznor announced, "This is the last we're going to be around -- we appreciate your support over the years," and ultimately left us a world full of "Hurt."

"Ain't no wrong/ain't no right/Only pleasure and pain," Perry Farrell shrieked on the third song, and if NIN was the pain, Jane's was the pleasure. The glammy L.A. band hit the stage, opening up a world of color, sexuality and celebration.

The phenomenal foursome wields a hammer like a cross between Zeppelin and the Stooges, with the sinewy Farrell a constant blur of motion. Jane's went right to the meat with its staggering epic "Three Days," which found Stephen Perkins beating the drums like Bonham and tattooed guitar hero Dave Navarro firing bolts like the Mighty Thor.

Where NIN boiled inside, Jane's spread its wings with towering anthems like "Ocean Size" and "The Mountain Song," while also jabbing with the short spastic stuff like "Been Caught Stealing" and "Stop!" With the formidable Eric Avery back on bass, Jane's blew the 2003 version of itself out of the water.

After "Jane Says," it was impossible to leave Burgettstown without talking about which band you liked better. Me, I'm a JA guy. Bill Clark, he bolted early -- he's totally Nine Inch Nails.

Scott Mervis can be reached at smervis@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2576.

First published on June 11, 2009 at 10:55 am

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09162/976708-388.stm#ixzz0ILm49QBc&C

Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino - Las Vegas Concert Video Reviews

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV made No.4 in best albums of 2008 on Last.fm

Nobody saw Ghosts I-IV coming. With a notice posted onto the Nine Inch Nails site simply saying “2 weeks” Trent Reznor brought a new vision of distribution to the world, deriding Radiohead's nod towards free distribution by putting out 36 instrumental tracks under a Creative Commons licence. Perhaps paradoxically it was an incredible commercial success, as the $300 Ultra-Deluxe Edition sold out in just three days, which netted Reznor's Null Corporation $1.6million dollars.

The four volumes, rumoured to be the opening burst in series of Ghost releases, are filled with oppositional clashes and experiments. “13 Ghosts” is one of the most haunting recordings Reznor has released, a gentle soundscape that floats through the speakers, while “19 Ghosts”, featuring Brian Viglione of The Dresden Dolls, is the kind of grotesque industrial clatter Martin Hannett would have happily killed to create. “34 Ghosts” holds the faintest echo of old NIN favourite “Closer To God” before crawling with static frequency and “1 Ghosts” debuts a broken piano lullaby and a synthesised warning siren, both at odds with “3 Ghosts” tribal thump and thunder.

Reznor followed Ghosts I-IV with The Slip, continuing his new release pattern unencumbered by the restrictive label meddling of his youth.

http://www.last.fm/bestof/2008/album/4

Review: Nine Inch Nails at Columbia, MO [twincities.com]

By Ross Raihala
Pop Music Critic
Updated: 11/25/2008 11:46:06 PM CST

After spending much of his career battling with his record labels, Trent Reznor entered 2008 as a free agent. And Tuesday night at the Target Center, Reznor and his band, Nine Inch Nails, turned in a memorable performance that suggested they'll do just fine on their own.

In terms of unbridled energy, NIN's 2005 gig at the Xcel Energy Center was probably the better show, if only because it saw a freshly rehabbed Reznor back in business after a five-year break. That tour was about re-establishing NIN's relevancy to an audience that might have forgotten the band. Tuesday night was about reminding that audience NIN's not ready to become a nostalgia act quite yet.

Judging by the crowd of 7,817, Reznor isn't adding many newbies to his following, although the number is larger than many markets, where he's seen positively anemic attendances in the 3,000 to 4,000 range. And Tuesday's performance seemed more aimed toward Reznor's hardcore following, with plenty of rewarding and sometimes subtle bits stuffed in along the way.

To wit, Reznor opened the evening with a selection of cuts from "The Slip," the new studio album he self-released in May in a variety of formats, including a free download.

Some of the fresh stuff took on a new life removed from the context of the middling "Slip," too, including the lively "Head Down" and a fiery "Discipline" that morphed into the NIN standard "March of the Pigs."

In one of many cool tricks that synced up the state-of-the-art visual display with the music, the encore-opening "Echoplex" began with a "Wheel of Fortune"-like interactive display that drummer Josh Freese used to launch the percussion track.

A handful of selections from NIN's other new album of the year, the fascinating instrumental collection "Ghosts I-IV," popped up midway through the set as Reznor and company manned such markedly un-NIN-like instruments as a marimba and acoustic guitar to interpret the loosely structured songs on stage.

In lesser hands, an avant-garde instrumental interlude would signal a mass exodus to the beer stands. But Reznor pulled it off thanks in part to the aforementioned visual display, which included sheer LCD curtains that dropped behind and in front of the band members and carried some eye-popping graphics and video to an awestruck crowd.

Elsewhere, Reznor simply turned up the volume and tore the place apart, working in many of the grinding industrial-rock songs that made NIN famous, from early stuff ("Head Like a Hole," "Wish" to more recent stunners ("Survivalism," "Only". In typically terse fashion, Reznor barely said a word to the crowd but did manage to apologize for his last-minute postponement that pushed back this gig from its originally scheduled date in August.

www.twincities.com

Review: Nine Inch Nails at Columbia, MO [Star Tribune.com]

By CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER, Star Tribune
Last update: November 26, 2008 - 8:19 AM

The makers of Trent Reznor's microphone stand can be proud: Tuesday's visceral, pummeling concert by Reznor's band Nine Inch Nails proved their product can withstand just about anything.

The bulldog-size but pitbull-tempered frontman alternately pounded his mike stand into the floor, tossed it around the stage or gripped it like it was Excalibur in the rock -- all in keeping with the impact of his music. Even though he writes and records a lot of NIN's songs all on his own, he used that stand as his main instrument of choice Tuesday.

Reznor's 20-year-old group proved almost as resilient in the mostly frantically paced 2 1/2-hour set. For one thing, the crowd of 7,817 was modestly impressive on a weeknight and in this economy (although, since it was a makeup date for a show canceled in August, fans had plenty of time to buy tickets).

More impressive, though, was how NIN steered clear of becoming strictly a nostalgia act. Where most hard-rock bands would be resting on their laurels two decades in, these guys continue to put on challenging but rewarding, innovative shows.

The set list relied heavily on the three albums NIN has put out over the past two years. That's right, three -- including two just this year. Newly freed from his record-label contract, Reznor has become hyper-productive, even issuing his songs for free online before they're available for purchase.

The practice seems to be paying off, as the crowd screamed and howled along through the first six songs of the concert, four of which came off the latest of those records, "The Slip." The juggernaut "1,000,000" made for an explosive opener, and the arena erupted twice over a few songs later as the band lit up with the '90s hit "March of the Pigs."

The fans were even tolerant of the mid-show segment of moody, atmospheric songs from this year's all-instrumental CD, "Ghosts I-IV." Reznor had great help there, though, from the visual effects, as the band eerily performed behind a curtain-like Jumbotron-type screen.

Throughout the concert, the crowd was subjected to a seizure-worthy array of strobes and whirring, flashing lights. With that hi-fi of a setup, it seemed a little hokey for Reznor to be singing into a mini-cam during the mega-hit "Closer," but the crowd ate up that gimmick, too. By the time he got to the pre-encore finale, "Head Like a Hole," Reznor returned to the front of the stage to take it out on his mike stand once again -- still the best visual effect of the night.

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/35113324.html?page=1&c=y

Nine Inch Nails - Hamilton, ON [Copps Coliseum] 11.14.08 Review

Trent Reznor sure has come a long way.

In the 19 years since releasing his debut, Pretty Hate Machine, the frontman and mastermind behind Nine Inch Nails has traded in his shoulder-length goth-hair and pale, wispy frame for a more streamlined look, complete with shorn locks and a considerably more muscular physique.

Perhaps this newfound fitness has contributed to his recently prolific output, dropping three full albums and a double-disc set of instrumentals onto our collective lap in the past four years, a veritable landslide of work from a man who managed but one song during a similar stretch in the '90s.

His stamina was certainly in evidence Friday night as the Lights in the Sky tour rolled into Hamilton on the back of The Slip, their latest album. Surprisingly, it's still available as a free download from the band’s website (nin.com).

Opening the show was Boris, a little-known quartet from Japan that swayed between heavy dirge metal, swooping atmospherics, and buzzsaw punk to a less than capacity crowd, owing more to the 7:15 start-time than an aversion to the band itself. By the time the headliners took the stage, though, Copps Coliseum was packed and pandemonium was in the air.

Out of the gate with a furious rendition of 1,000,000, and a bouncy Discipline, NIN was already showcasing both their intensity and a painstakingly synchronized lightshow, but the rambunctious crowd was in need of familiarity, and once the opening blips of Closer registered, the building positively erupted.

The roar, however, almost immediately gave way to awe, as a spectacular, three-tiered screen system was revealed as the latest in the envelope-pushing band’s bag of tricks.

A massive LCD screen sat at the back of the stage as a visual anchor to the flexing, mobile chain-link fences that hung ominously above, and once those seemingly see-through screens became opaque with pulsing lava, and once the blood-red floodlights engulfed the audience, it became apparent that it was Reznor’s face pushing through the ooze, morphing into a distorted, fisheye-lens image of teeth gnawing through the band’s biggest hit.

With these moveable screens, the show all at once became multi-dimensional; a handful of instrumental tracks became sojourns through rippled sand-dunes shielded by a cloudy sky, into a forest of layered branches hovering over gently shifting water, and under tendrils of smoke twirled against a backdrop of fog.

Survivalism featured an eight-monitor bank of security-cameras that included hilariously distracting pre-taped footage, and a cage of bad-channel television snow encased the stage for Only, an effect only negated when Reznor touched the screen, shoveling shards of black-and-white to the side with a wave of his hand, creating an effect not unlike a man attempting to escape a snow-globe.

Easy to overlook in the saturation of spectacular visuals was the sound quality of the show itself, and the band has never sounded crisper or more pulverizing. The return of longtime guitarist Robin Finck to the fold was a welcome addition, as was the somewhat unexpected inclusion of former Beck bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen.

Big-beat, power-chord favourites Wish and Head Like a Hole were stripped to captivate sonically, utilizing only wide-washing, scattershot lights to bathe the audience, allowing the euphoric echo of a stadium full of people singing in unison to be seen as well as heard.

The frantic sing-along to Hurt belied not only the harrowing rock-cliché of flicked Bics, but also the overriding spectacle of the event: there is delight to be had in listening to a band this good make difficult, challenging music when it suits the mood, and a perverse pleasure in watching the latest technological advancements being used to simulate broken machinery.

Trent Reznor has come a long way, and after almost two decades it’s amazing that it’s this performance he’ll be hard-pressed to top.

Video From The Show

The Spec.com

Review: Nine Inch Nails at Columbia, MO

The visuals at Friday's NIN show in Columbia were epic and extraordinary. Photos by Timothy Finn/The Star

COLUMBIA -- Thirty minutes before show time, the scene inside the Mizzou Arena looked grim. The floor in front of the stage was reasonably full, but hardly packed. Worse, the seats surrounding the floor were as empty as Arrowhead Stadium during the fourth quarter of a blow-out.

Attendance has been an issue during this Nine Inch Nails tour. Locale may have a lot to do with it. In February 2006, Trent Reznor brought his band to Kemper Arena and drew a crowd of about 10,000. That clearly wasn't going to happen tonight in this college town.

But as it turned out, the turn-out would be respectable. Blame (or credit) the late arrivals on security, which treated everyone like passengers flying from London to Beirut. (The situation was aggravated by customers like they guy in front of me, who had a small hunting knife in his pocket.)

By the time NIN took the stage, the floor was packed and the first level was relatively full. It looked like about 6,000 or so were in the place. Several times during the two-hour-plus show, they would cheer and chant and sing like a throng of 10,000.

This was one of those shows of the year. It would definitely win the "visual-effects of the decade" award if there were one. Some of them were mind-blowing, especially the interactive ones -- like the blizzard of static during "Only": It would devour Reznor; seconds later, he would emerge, as if it were surrounding him, not behind him. Or the time a roadie/techie came out with a handheld light and used it like a rag to wipe away the image on the screen, revealing another image below it. Or the swirls and clouds and plumes of smoke that danced across a bright blue Roger Dean-like landscape ...

Words aren't adequate; neither is any YouTube vid or these low-res images from a point/shoot camera. After watching this extraordinary communion of music and visuals, nothing will be the same again. Lasers, confetti, flashpots, videos? All eight-tracks and cassettes in a digital world.

The music was great, too. More surpsing: The sound was decent most of the night. Things got a little too high-end a few times, but Reznor's vocals were pretty clear all night.

The setlist included several of the lush, instrumental "Ghost" tracks, which provided respite for the ears and the legs but not for the eyes. Even then, the visuals were stunning. But the best moments were the riotous ones, those that fuse industrial/hardcore/metal with disco: "March of the Pigs," "The Great Destroyer," "Piggy" and "Head Like A Hole," which ignited one of the most cathartic sing-alongs/shout-backs I've heard in years.

Reznor, as usual, wasn't in much of a talking mood. He introduced his band (guitarist Robin Finck, drummer Josh Freese, keyboard player Alessandro Cortini and bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen), graciously thanked the opening act, Boris, saying something like, "It's an honor to play with them."

He also thanked his fans for coming out and urged them to grab his new album free on line, and as an afterthought said something like: Get them all for free if you want. I don't give a f*** anymore.

After experiencing an evening of such extraordinary musical/visual theater -- for less than $60 -- we know that's not true. He still cares; he just has his priorities straight.

Back To Rockvile: Timothy Finn