Nine Inch Nails back on tour

Several years ago, I stood alone in the rain on a muddy field at the Arvika festival, surrounded by thousands as Trent Reznor teared away at his equipment.

After that Wave Goodbye tour, he called it a quit. But recently he decided to resurrect the whole thing and released a record called “Hesitation Marks”. This past weekend I went to another Nine Inch Nails concert in Stockholm and I thought it couldn’t possible top those previous ones? Well, yes and no.

The setlist was incredible. First half of the concert roughly consisted of old favorite songs. Then it got a bit tedious with the new songs in the middle and Trent declared that he had been in a bad mood for several days. But it all took off again and the last third of the show contained the suspected crowd-pleasers.

Highlights included a totally mind-blowing version of Eraser, a somewhat surprising appearance of The Great Destroyer (including the only talk of the evening) and the banana-crazy percussion on March of the Pigs.

Trent Reznor Almighty in Stockholm.

I read somewhere that Nine Inch Nails rehearsed 50 songs for this tour, to make each set unpredictable. And they really nailed it. I only counted one bad song (Find my way from the latest album), the rest was pretty epic. Trent even had the guts to cut half the band during mid-tour, including renowned bass player Pino Palladino. Fortunately Robin Finck covered the flank as usual. The lightning and projected backdrops were simple yet suggestive, as expected. It is not And all that could have been, but it never will.

Everybody really ought to visit the gig in Copenhagen tomorrow. Who knows what shiny treasures might be uncovered?