REVIEW: Nine Inch Nails at Mohegan Sun, August 7, 2008

Two or three songs into last night’s Nine Inch Nails concert at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut, I looked down from my nosebleed seats at the people on the floor and I thought to myself, “These people do not deserve a show this good.” Yes, for a moment, I became that guy. And then, “March of the Pigs” happened, and the crowd began to wake up. A couple of songs after that, the band broke into “Closer” and the stadium went nuts. Sure, the moment was predictable—who doesn’t love the “I wanna fuck you like an animal” song?—but it was a great moment, just the same. Suddenly, the fans who maybe didn’t know the more recent material all too well—the band opened with three tracks from their most recent album—suddenly, they felt included. Listen: I’ve been to shows where the artists refuses to play any of their hits (the David Bowie portion of NIN-Bowie in 1995), and those shows are always a disappointment. Three songs into last night’s show, there were probably a lot of fans in that stadium who didn’t know quite what to expect. But when the band gave them something to hold onto with “Closer,” that was all it took. Trent Reznor and company grabbed ahold of us all, and for the next two hours or so they didn’t let go.

*********

This tour seems to be about breaking preconceived notions. Every Nine Inch Nails tour since the Self-Destruct/Further Down the Spiral era has been about that, to one extent or another. But on this tour it seems as if the band is trying extra hard to push envelopes and whatnot. The band mellowed things a great deal more than usual during the middle portion of the set, playing a series of tracks from the instrumental opus Ghosts I-IV. I actually found myself sitting down during this part, not because the songs were less exciting—the visuals employed during this section of the concert were the best I’ve seen, actually, and can’t really be described with words, or with still pictures—but because I felt like that was what this section was for: to give all of us crazy, dancing idiots a chance to sit and recharge, both physically and mentally. The band seemed to have figured out exactly at which point in the show a change of pace was necessary, and they delivered.

(Also, you would have to be deaf not to understand that the middle section was a breather for Trent’s voice, as well. The old man still has it, but all that screaming is taking more out of him than it used to. He’s had to postpone a couple of shows now because of his strained voice. That middle section seems designed to help limit the number of postponements, as well.)

The Ghosts pieces were haunting and beautiful, and they gave each member of the band a chance to shine musically in ways that you wouldn’t expect at a NIN show. So much of the Nine Inch Nails sound, at least to the casual listener, is about bombast and rage. These songs helped to prove to everyone present that Trent Reznor can be just as effective as a composer when he’s being subtle. It was telling to me that we didn’t have to suffer through any drunken frat-boy jeers of “This sucks” during this section. Everyone in the arena seemed to get it, to get what was going on and what was expected of them. For fifteen or twenty minutes, Nine Inch Nails turned their rock concert into a sort of industrial recital. And nobody seemed to mind.

*********

As impressive as the middle section was, it was during the rest of the show, during the songs that I’ve heard live four or five times now, that the band really proved what they were made of. This version of the band is the tightest I’ve yet heard. Robin Finck was just fucking insane on the guitar. It was almost as if he knew that the asshole who wrote this article on his being inferior to Aaron North was in the building and had to be proven a fool. Alessandro Cortini is a genius on the keyboards, taking the dense soundscapes from the original recordings and delivering them to the audience in a live and very intense way. And of course, when you’re a band that plays music as insanely danceable as Nine Inch Nails, you need a great rhythm section. Justin Meldal-Johnson and Josh Freese are not just that. They are an amazing rhythm section.

Highlights for me included the killer opening (I love The Slip and was happy to see them open with three songs from it); the “back from the break section,” which opened with “Pinion,” went into “Wish,” peaked with “Terrible Lie,” and concluded with “Survivalism,”; and, of course, the completely bat-shit insane end of the the regular show/pre-encore section, which went like this: “Only,” “The Hand That Feeds,” “Head Like A Hole.” Each of these sections just reminded me of how great Trent Reznor and company are at putting together set lists. No matter the length of the set, from the shorter shows (NIN-Bowie and the theater part of the With Teeth tour) to the longer ones, a Nine Inch Nails show is an exercise in pacing, if nothing else. They hype you up, bring you down, and then hype you back up again. And then, just when you don’t think you can handle anymore, they send you away with an intense yet haunting encore.

*********

So much of the concert-going experience is about who you go with, and about who is sitting around you at the show. I was blessed to have been able to attend this show with my friend Beth, who is probably even more of a NIN fanatic than I am. On the way down to Uncasville, we got to shoot the shit about our high school days, comparing notes on the characters we knew way back when. Then we got to get our asses kicked by the awesomeness of the show. And, finally, on the way home, we got to talk about our obsession in ridiculous detail, having the sort of conversation that we probably never would have had if we’d been in the car with a sane individual, a non-fanatic. There is no one I would have rather seen this show with.

*********

Even if you’re no more than a fairweather Nine Inch Nails fan, this tour is worth your attention. I get the feeling, based on some interviews I’ve read, and based on the beautiful one-by-one exit the band made during “In This Twilight” last night, that we may be getting near the end of the NIN touring years. So, you may not have many more chances to witness this awesomeness in person. The visuals alone are worth the price of admission. But, if you can’t afford to go—and that would be completely understandable, given the state of our economy, and given everything else that is usually going on in the life of the average person in this day and age—be sure to write yourself a note to check out this tour if it ever comes to DVD. This is something that no one who is even vaguely interested in the band should miss.

Here’s the setlist, courtesy of a message board contributor at Echoing the Sound:

999,999

1,000,000
Letting You
Discipline
March of the Pigs
The Frail
The Wretched
Closer
Gave Up

The Warning
The Great Destroyer

Ghosts 1
Ghosts 5
Ghosts 19
Ghosts Piggy

The Greater Good

Pinion
Wish
Terrible Lie
Survivalism
The Big Come Down
Ghosts 31
Only
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole

ENCORE
Echoplex
God Given
The Good Soldier
Hurt
In This Twilight

Have you seen Nine Inch Nails on this tour? If so, please add your thoughts in the comments below (or link up your off-site review, if applicable). I’d love to hear whether you agree with me or not.

Edited at 03:13 p.m. on August 8, 2008 to add “The Big Come Down” to the setlist. It’s position in the set is approximate, as it was not on the printed list that the Echoing the Sound poster had.

Comment on this article here.