NINE INCH NAILS

w/ Jaguar Love

Festival Hall – Melbourne, 25th February, 2009.

When it was announced that Nine Inch Nails was to headline the Soundwave Festival, the band was a 5 piece with Josh Freese pounding the pig skins, and the band was playing the amazing ‘lights in the sky’ (LITS) tour. It was laster announced the band would be bringing the full stage setup of the LITS tour down under for their shows here. Josh Frease quits the band, and is replaced by Ilan Rubin, from Lostprophets. Alessandro Cortini follows suit, but no replacement is announced.

By the time the band touched down in Australia for their 7 shows nationally, they are a stripped down 4 piece with a more minimalistic lighting set up – with an epilepsy warning!

Wednesday night comes along, and the anticipation for the show is high – hightened even more after Trent Reznor’s comments about making the band ‘disappear’ for a while. After some issues are cleared with my pass, I entered the festering pile of shit that is Festival Hall, to a nearing full capacity crowd.

Warm up act Love Jaguar have come and gone, and the clock is soon to strike 9pm. My interest is momentarily drawn towards Anders Friden, vocalist of In Flames, and their touring guitarist Niklas Engel sitting 2 rows behind me.. easy fan boy.. concentrate on the gig. Fast forward a few minutes – lights dim, crowd cheers, Nine Inch Nails enter!

True to their latest release ‘the slip‘, tonights show starts off with the triple punch of 1,000,000, Letting You, and Discipline. Despite the shitty view if you’re anywhere but the floor or balcony, the sound was spot on. It was nice to know from an early stage that despite Trent’s words regarding NIN, this wasnt to be a farewell greatest hits setlist.

March of the pigs followed up next, well received from the crowd, including those ‘oldschoolers’ not familiar with the recent prolific times of NIN. (The Frail and) The Wretched continued the pace, and the applause from the crowd, before returning to The Slip for ‘Head Down‘.

Trent seemed more reclusive than I remember, sticking instead to being the extreme sweaty tank running around on stage, and it took until this moment to get anything other than lyrics out of trent with a ‘thanks’.. baby steps big man.

A reworked Burn followed Trent’s… ummm… speech, which as always is a highlight of any NIN show. The bands photographer/artist/all awesome dude was on stage to film the track, which can be seen below. The 4 piece NIN is an interesting thing to watch, with each member handling their usual instruments, and also having their own little keyboard setup to keep them even busier.

(NIN: Burn Live from on stage, Melbourne 2.25.09 [HD] from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.)

Survivalism and Gave Up kept up the intensity of the show, with the stripped back light show going insane. La Mer was a nice surprise, and once Ilan Rubin kicked in on the drums, and Justin Meldal-Johnsen on the bass, got the funk going on the track, before my personal highlight of the night, The Fragile. If this is to be the final NIN show in… ages… there wasnt a track from them I was keener to hear live, and thankfully, it stood up to my expectations! A NIN show has the amazing ability of one track making you want to be bouncing around in a steamy, sweaty mosh pit, and in the next instance want to be alone in a room, just letting the emotions of the music flow through your body.. and they managed this to tonight, especially with ‘The Fragile‘. Ilan Rubin joined in with the multi tasking on this song, swapping drum sets during the ‘break’ in the track. You have drummers like Jimmy Chamberlin who are more casual than a t-shirt, then you have someone like Ilan Rubin, who it seems manages to move every muscle in his body to hit the drum. Quite an entertaining man to watch, its awesome watching him with so much enthusiasm and effort in his drumming.

Non Entity, and The Good Soldier kept up the obscure, and the later, the funk of the night, with some Michael jackson-esque beats sweeping from the stage.

Trent gave a slightly longer speech this time, commenting on the ‘better looking’ front row than in america, the incredibly hot (temperature wise) venue that is Festival Hall, and putting the band away for a while.

After making sure everyone had caught their breath with the, how should I say, beautiful section of the night, the band came back with a kick in the face to finish off the set with Wish, Suck, The hand that Feeds, and head Like a hole, the later of which, as always, is an insane experience live, and tonight was no exception.

One can complain about the ideals of the ‘encore’… you were thinking about it werent you! done yet? Good. But after the show in New Zealand, and Sydney’s effort, both of which didnt have the written down encore played, I was a little nervous as to whether the crowd deserved it or not. Thankfully that decision wasnt left up to me, and the boys in black returned to stage with many a cheer, and ripped straight into ‘Reptile‘, slowly increasing the appearances of tracks from the downward spiral. From the rocking beast that is Reptile, to the afformentioned albums title track, the downward spiral. This track was kind of a big deal, people know it. It came, it went, unconcured. Ilan was strutting his stuff again on ‘The beginning of the end‘, before again pounding the pig err skins on dead souls. I’ve loved this song for a while, so it was great to hear the song again live. The end was nigh, there was only one option left, and memories of the last NIN tour came flooding to mind. Trent, a keyboard, hurt, a fuckwit in the crowd yelling to trent, Trent stops song. Many a tear shed.

I was pleased to hear a louder version of hurt than that tour, but there was still so much chatting during the song, especially people talking to their friends about how much they love the song… umm.. is that really the best time for that folks?! Anywho, eventually I could close my eyes, and hide away at that special place where Trent serenades me. People will complain that this isnt a good way to end the gig, it gets over played, but personally I think its a great way to finish, and once the full band kicks in towards the end, the song is something special, no matter how often you hear it.

The 1 hour 45 minutes are up, the venue is sweaty from the standing to the seated, and if this is to be the final tour for a while for Nine Inch Nails, they sure went out on a high!

9/10

Setlist:
1000000
Letting You
Discipline
March Of The Pigs
The Frail
The Wretched
Head Down
Burn
Survivalism
Gave Up
La Mer
The Fragile
Non Entity
The Good Soldier
Wish
Suck
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Reptile
The Downward Spiral
The Beginning Of The End
Dead Souls
Hurt

Review by Scott Boelsen

Thanks to KMW for the pass.