When Nine Inch Nails last played Milwaukee nearly 20 years ago, they’d reached an unenviable career milestone that a young Trent Reznor probably never envisioned for himself: clinging to relevance on the strength of a post-rehab, Dave Grohl-augmented comeback album (With Teeth) that emulated modern bands who’d started out emulating him. Industrial rock wasn’t conceived as an age-gracefully proposition, and Reznor’s reputation during his band’s ’90s heyday didn’t suggest he’d be one of Gen-X’s longest-surviving icons.
That’s the way it turned out, though, and Reznor quite naturally became a different kind of beacon from the Mr. Self-Destruct we all knew and loved: the healthy, sober, not necessarily self-loathing middle-aged guy we could all be if we could afford personal trainers and nutritionists. And while he’s periodically put the NIN moniker on the back burner, Reznor has continued to imbue popular culture with his personal brand of mopey rage. He garners more accolades via film scores these days, but Monday night’s sold-out show at Fiserv Forum showed he’s still got everything it takes to front a loud rock band.
Opening act Boys Noize will be collaborating with NIN at Coachella in April for a performance dubbed “Nine Inch Noize;” the producer/DJ started his hourlong set with a remix of NIN’s “Down In It,” performing from the soundboard console at the rear of the venue floor, complete with lights and fog machines for the benefit of most fans. Anyone who felt the need to stake out front-and-center Trent real estate, however, would’ve been unable to see Boys Noize due to the curtained B-stage in the middle of the arena. That’s where Reznor began the NIN set without so much as a minute’s pause, illuminated alone at a piano seconds after the Noize set ended. It was a striking rendition of the ballad “Something I Can Never Have,” a perfect soft entry point whether you knew the song or not.
NIN never stay quiet for long, right? Can you imagine a NIN album with two ballads in a row? Yet that’s how Reznor is opening his sets on this tour, because the show is meant to be taken in as a single seamless performance, a point which may be somewhat lost on many attendees. Nevertheless, after one more solo tune (the rarely performed non-album track “Non-Entity”), Reznor’s bandmates crept onstage for “Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)” before they all hustled to the main stage for “Wish,” the old-school kick-down that should’ve sent the crowd into hysterics.
It didn’t, though. Blame frigid temps or post-Olympics doldrums or simply the fanbase’s average age, but it took this crowd a while to warm up to Reznor and company. A second quiet interlude of “The Frail” may have actually helped, the suspenseful ambience broken not by “The Wretched” as on The Fragile but instead “Reptile.” Rather than the glitchy, Al Jourgensen-style riffage of the studio version, long-standing guitarist Robin Finck took a much heavier approach, to hypnotic effect. “Heresy” broke the spell afterwards, shaking up what was starting to feel like a willy-nilly setlist. The song’s chorus may be fun to sing along to but it’s lost its bite over the past 30 years, and jutting up against the relatively hokey recent track “Copy of a” the show was starting to feel a little directionless.
A more immersive visual spectacle might’ve taken the show to another level; Fiserv has seen its share of incredible light shows in recent years, but NIN’s rarely impacted anyone beyond the floor level. For a legacy act like NIN with a bit of a techie reputation, there was nothing particularly innovative about the production. That said, when the band returned to the B-stage for a collaborative mini-set with Boys Noize, the relatively low-fi effects were intoxicating, lots of fog and red lights making for a brief goth-y rave highlighted by an imaginative rearrangement of “Closer.”
The band returned to the main stage for a presumed greatest-hits barnburner finale that wasn’t predictable after all. “Mr. Self Destruct” showcased new/old drummer Josh Freese who just returned to the fold in a swap with the Foo Fighters last year. All that drama aside, Freese was a great fit with NIN during his ’05-’08 stint and he seems to have only gotten more versatile since then; in a very tight set with little room for individual showmanship, Freese stood out as the most dynamic instrumentalist onstage.
Finally pausing for some banter after a blistering “The Perfect Drug,” Reznor acknowledged an audience sign touting the skills of “the new guy,” bassist Stu Brooks of Dub Trio, playing his first-ever leg of a NIN tour. Reznor also gave a shout-out to two of his favorite Davids (Lynch and Bowie) prior to a rousing “I’m Afraid Of Americans.” With time winding down in the under-two-hour show (not including the opening DJ set), a lot of fans knew how this was going to end: “Hurt.” And most fans have heard the song done in at least a few different ways—Johnny Cash’s celebrated version comes to mind. Whether quiet, or as in this case, ear-splitting, the end of the song can take a listener in so many different cathartic directions. The overall show was great, but it needed something to take it to that next level; with this climactic noise barrage, it got there.
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