Nine Inch Nails
6 out of 10 - Good Band, Bad show day.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Terminal 5 NYC
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In the wake of the NIN/JA outing earlier this summer, Trent Reznor and company set up a small number of gigs in several major cities to get their (supposed) last feel of the stage in significantly smaller venue sizes than they’ve become accustomed to. With those two key selling points, it still appeared to be a premature venture, because a lot of fans just saw them with the newly reformed Jane’s Addiction, and now it all felt as if we never had a chance to miss them quite yet.
That being said, Nine Inch Nails entered Terminal 5 with a couple of already renowned gigs amongst fans from other venues in the city with their tailor-made experiences, one being the Webster Hall gig that had their landmark The Downward Spiral album played front to back with coveted encores to follow. Alas, then, we found ourselves at the first of two gigs at Terminal 5 this past Tuesday with high expectations on our wave good-bye from Reznor and whoever he’s calling Nine Inch Nails live these days.
From the beginning the concertgoer was in for trouble with the opening band, The Horrors, having their name become a bit of a bad joke since they looked and sounded like the poor man’s something or other that just stepped out of 1983’s goth rock scene, and here we were in the heat of the crowd waiting for the end of their set. It’s around then the other early birds were really starting to dig in, and the feeling was starting to set in that where we were was where we were in the venue, and there was no escaping this boring band.
Then somewhere in the smoke around 9 p.m., Nine Inch Nails took the stage and would not leave for nearly two and a half hours. Starting with a B-side from the ill-received With Teeth era, the band wound up our enthusiasm for better things to follow, but in turn led to a full set of overindulgence in a heavily latter-day-career-favored set at a local farewell gig where fans were most likely waiting for early back-catalog gems.
No real momentum carried through the show. It was mostly riddled with faint glimmers of a stride that would quickly take the wrong fork in the road, where you would probably not mind being on line for drinks or the bathroom during a concert of this nature, unfortunately. And just when your legs were about to buckle or you were fed up with the set thus far, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus was introduced onstage for a rendition of “Reptile,” and the ever-present handheld recording devices went into a frenzy while the younger crowd lost their step to the Bauhaus fan favorite, “Kick In The Eye,” that followed as the newer NIN material dried up for a short stint.
Once you noticed it was nearing 11 p.m., it was already too late to hope for a reprieve since they never seemed to finish playing. With tangents that felt like they were almost done, the band just kept on with another handful of songs from the post-fragile eras where you would think they’d be leaning towards their big guns to ride out the rest of an already long show for a band like this.
While others were misty-eyed or kissing their partners, I was yawning to their tearjerker “Hurt” and heading for the door feeling the letdown crush of an admired band having left a bitter taste in this fan’s mouth on what may or may not be the final time we all get to see them live. Though if history is a teacher, and I like to think it is, I believe we will see Nine Inch Nails again onstage in the years to come.
Home
Terrible Lie
Beginning Of The End
Discipline
March Of The Pigs
The Line Begins To Blur
I’m Afraid Of Americans V1
Ruiner
The Big Comedown
Burn
Gave Up
La Mer
The Fragile
Non-Entity
Eraser
The Way Out Is Through
1,000,000
Letting You
Survivalism
Reptile (w/Peter Murphy)
Kick In The Eye (w/Peter Murphy)
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
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The Frail
The Wretched
The Day The World Went Away
Dead Souls (w/Peter Murphy)
Wish
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Hurt
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