Nine Inch Nailed

I've never been disappointed at a Nine Inch Nails show. I saw them for the first time in 2005 on the With_Teeth club tour at The Warfield after having only experienced NIN's music through the albums. The intensity of the music and the band coupled with the comparatively small-scale venue made for an amazing two nights. It more than made up for the discomfiture we experienced standing in line one cold San Francisco morning to purchase tickets for the shows. I saw them again in 2005 at the Oakland Arena and that was fantastic. Regretfully, I had to miss the NIN and Bauhaus concert at the Shoreline in 2006, but last week, I saw them at Oracle Arena (formerly the Oakland Arena) again and it was glorious. I was very impressed by the visual aspect of the With_Teeth arena tour, but the visual design of NIN's current North American jaunt ups the ante considerably. Only by reading the feature in Wired about the tour's art production did I learn that the show was not completely staged.


WIRED
NIN Dazzles With Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens
By Bryan Gardiner

A vast wall of swirling static dances on a giant screen as Trent Reznor and his band launch into their song, "Only." Initially obscured by this sea of visual white noise, the Nine Inch Nails front man intermittently appears to push through the particles of snow with his hands and body, popping in and out of view and opening up random tunnels in the chaos.

"Sometimes, I think I can see right through myself," he sings.

Nine Inch Nails fans are accustomed to such sonic and visual feasts whenever Reznor and company go out on tour. But this time around, NIN has pulled out all the stops, creating a groundbreaking, fully interactive visual display that is as much a part of the show as the band's instruments.

"I'm not really a purist," admits Reznor. "If I'm in the studio working on an album, I try to only please myself. But when it's a tour, it feels a bit more like I have a responsibility to some degree to entertain people." Read more