“C’mon pigs,” shouted Trent Reznor early on during last night’s show at Barclays Center. A simple “hey Brooklyn, great to see you,” would have sufficed but even after 25 years, the Nine Inch Nails main man still has a healthy distaste for the world around him and it continues to produce brilliantly brutal music.
Backed with a five-piece band, a couple of occasional back up singers and a light show that looked like it took the help of ex-NASA engineers to create, Reznor put on an unrelenting two hour, 15 minute performance to a near sold out crowd.
Nine Inch Nails’ latest album “Hesitation Marks” is their first in five years and has come at a time when music from the 1990s is making a massive resurgence. But most of the new material can stand up without the help of nostalgia. The electro bent of songs like “Copy Of A” and “All Time Low” might not be to the taste of his loyal industrial-rock following of old (many of whom dressed up in their goth gear for the night), but the brooding hostility still makes the songs completely compelling. It’s little wonder that he’s christened this current tour “Tension 2013.”
As Reznor began to work the classics into the show, the feeling of malevolence only seemed to increase. “Wish” was loud enough and nasty enough to feel like a slug in the stomach and the grinding riff at the center of “The Hand That Feeds” had the kind of force normally associated with a jackhammer. For all that power, the kicker (as always) turned out to be “Hurt” – Reznor’s fragile and emotionally pornographic document of his heroin use which ended the evening.
He’s not quite the drug-addled nihilist he used to be when he wrote that modern American classic, but even as a 48-year-old, Oscar-winning, married father-of-two, Reznor still seethes with fury. It’s just as well, because a Nine Inch Nails album about doing the school run and the difficulties of making reservations in Hollywood’s best restaurants wouldn’t be half as exciting as this.
Opening for Nine Inch Nails were reclusive Canadians Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who played their set in virtual darkness while grainy film projections lit up the screen behind them. Widely adored in the underground, the band were still too challenging for the Nine Inch Nails faithful who idly chatted through their performance. Those who bothered to listen were rewarded with beautifully sweeping instrumentals from their last album “‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!” which recently won the prestigious Polaris Music Prize in their native land.
The bill repeats Tuesday at Prudential Center in Newark. If you’re planning to go, here are a couple of tips: 1) Get there early, and 2) Shut up.