Well, I went to the NIN show the day after the one posted here… and let me say, it fucking brutalised!
There was a good balance of new and old. Thankfully, Trent restricted the With Teeth material to ‘Only’ and ‘Hand that Feeds’… which surprisingly sounded a lot better live than they did recorded. There was a lot of old material, like Wish, Gave Up, Head Like a Hole, Burn, and a couple of surprises as well… such as Mr Self Destruct; never expected them to do that live, and it sounded fucking great. There was an even balance between all the albums. The new material sounded great (I couldn’t tell you what songs… I only knew they were ‘new’ because I was unfamiliar with them) and the band was really able to flesh it out live.
The live band was ridiculously visceral, and multi-dimensional. For example, for one song, it was just Trent and the keyboardist mucking around with weird effects for one of the new songs. For a couple of songs, Geordie played guitar.
The live band not only sounded great, but played with a fuckload of energy. It’s never really a NIN concert without wanton destruction, which the guitarist fulfilled by snapping the neck of his guitar in two and kicking his amp over and propping it up with the said guitar. Joy!
Trent didn’t really say anything to the crowd except…
“tonight has been fucking great… last nite, it’s been the tour from hell, and i seriously was gonna quit… but, tonites made it worthwhile”… awwww.
Fantastic sound. Great setlist. Excellent performance. Cannot fault it. Kudos to Trent.