RKNet Blog… thing

Good evening, it’s your friendly neighborhood cyst Sketch here bringing you an article for your Internet Arts & Leisure feed. Today we bring you a review on “Sex In The City: The Movie”… sorry, wrong drugs. Now that we’ve changed substances a proper review is in order. Last night the one man band Trent Reznor stopped into Manchester, NH with co-conspirators Robin Finck, Alessandro Cortini, Josh Freese and Justin Meldal-Johnsen to assemble the band Nine Inch Nails. They stopped in Manch-vegas as part of the second leg of their Lights In The Sky Tour Over North America. I arrived at 6PM, half an hour before they opened the doors. In that time I got moist from the weather, exchanged words with some of the other patrons and watched planes fly over closer than they should’ve. About five minutes prior to them opening the doors one of the security guards got everyone’s attention to inform us of some of the rules — no smoking, no food or drink from outside, no knives, no chains etc. When he mentioned the knives and chains I was looking around for the people with chains seeing who was gonna get screwed for entry. Behind me was a guy wearing Tripp NYC pants which had a chain on them, which couldn’t be removed. To which he ironically responded by saying, “I would get it off but I left my knife at home.” So I got in, bought a shirt for $35 because I’m daffy and wanted some schwag. Now before I get to reviewing Nine Inch Nails’ performance I must mention the opening act.

As it can be shown from my previous entry reviewing the Rock & Shock Festival with Mushroomhead and Gwar, I have a predisposition for disliking opening acts. I believe that many of them are hired deliberately because they suck and make the headliners infinitely greater. This opener was no different. The band was called Health and came out of Los Angeles. I felt their name was ironic since after their set was over I WANTED TO KILL MYSELF! To save you the trouble I’ll let you know what you’re in store for with this group. Imagine three skinny Hot Topic Emo kids screeching on Fender guitars and stomping on distortion pedals while singing like a seven-year old girl in one microphone and screaming into another microphone; while the drummer, who looks like Chino Moreno of Deftones (IMAGE) if he was built like a brick shit-house and had a pony tail, actually plays his instrument. To say that I wanted to slit my wrists after hearing their “music” would be both an offense to my wrists and the blade I would’ve used. They were nothing more than a garage band that was trying to rip off Nine Inch Nails and Muse and any other industrial band you can think. Now I’ve never been to a Nine Inch Nails show before but from my understanding the opening acts are mostly noise bands, that’s all they were minus the band part. Trent Reznor should get his $20 back. But one thing I noticed is that the “singer” had two microphones - one mounted on a mic stand where he let us hear his girly voice and a pink microphone from the ’50s which he screamed into. And it occurred to me that one of the microphones was auto-tuned, either to make him sound very girly or like he has testosterone in his system. I’m thinking the first one since at one point toward the end of their “set” the “bassist”/(long haired douche who pounded a drum stick on a single electronic drum pad that was never heard through the speakers and danced around on stage like a ballerina) went up to the mic stand and screamed like a little girl. Now me being a somewhat rational man at this point hysterically laughed like the dozen others around me. During the encore Trent said to the crowd, “Buy their album, take mine for free.”

Now on to the main event. House lights get killed and the ambient “999,999″ gets cued up which leads into them playing “1,000,000″ off their new album “The Slip” (which can be officially downloaded for free and purchased here.) They then proceeded to do two more songs off the new album, “Letting You” and the single “Discipline”, both which were a powerhouse on the audience. One thing I learned about the show is that it is oddly one of the more tamer shows I’ve been to, though the concerts I’ve been to have been straight-up metal bands and have a very aggressive tone to them. With NIИ it carries many tones to it, start off aggressive then become very serene and then back to aggressive. Also Trent doesn’t really interact with the audience like many front men do. Then again I’m sure that’d just be one more thing in the arsenal he’d have to deal with due to the intricacy of the show. But as much as it lacked in band/crowd interaction the theatricality of the show is definitely worth seeing even if you don’t know of Nine Inch Nails or their music or even if you don’t like it, the visuals are amazing.

First of all, in order to truly take in the visuals you are best to be toward the back of the crowd, maybe even sit in the bleachers (as much of a cop out as it is.) I neglected to remember this so my dosage was a bit low. The highlight of their visuals is three large LED mesh curtains (one at the rear, one in the middle and one in the front of the stage) that go up and down for each song to accentuate it. For instance their song “Vessel” (a song with almost no practical instruments involved except guitar), the five men stand in front of the forward curtain which flashes distortions of red to the beat of the song (EXAMPLE, best viewed in high quality.) When they did instrumental tracks off “Ghosts” they stood in front of the middle screen which was dropped and contained a desert, while the front screen was elevated so to show the grey clouds sifting through black above the amber dunes. (”Word?” Word.) The sight of it was truly beautiful, but would’ve been better if people hadn’t have used this time to talk among themselves since there were no lyrics being sung. To those who attended and did the aforementioned crime, fuck you. (5 GHOSTS I) And the screens don’t just serve as pre-rendered images to highlight the narrative of the songs since they are fully interactive. The stage has sensors strategically placed so at any time Trent can manipulate the screen. For instance during “Only” the front curtain is dropped and projects TV noise and when he passes the sensor he can open up a hole in the static (YIKES.) Truely gorgeous use of technology. During their performance of “The Greater Good” off “Year Zero” they projected on the front curtain what looked like a blue microscopic organism reacting to the music. However it got really amped up when an embossed blown up version of Trent singing was pulled up. As I said, it was an interactive show which used sensors and other pieces of technology to make it what it is. When it made that turn I froze in awe. (To freeze in awe at your computer, LOOK HERE.)

“Survivalism” was probably one of their more pulsating songs due to it being a rather ferocious track. And the screen in the back projected rather comical images. For those who have never seen the video, it is a constant camera motion going to various security feeds watching the band perform and an apartment building with the tenants either being submissive to the totalitarian government or committing crimes against it (homosexuality, graffiti, and other things against the good Christian country that it is in this alternative reality.) One monitor housed the Bureau of Morality censoring something, one of a camera on Trent, two of a camera on the audience, and three others with prerecorded footage (most likely) featuring a couple having sex in the bathroom, a man walking down a stairwell and I believe the inside of a bathroom stall. Never a dull moment in the three hours that Nine Inch Nails was on stage. From “1,000,000″ to “In This Twilight” it was a proverbial narcotic the whole place was taking in. They closed their set with their classic single “Head Like A Hole” then dropped the front curtain which held the NIИ logo for a good minute or two with droning ambiance over the PA. I knew the show wasn’t over but the suspense for the encore was grinding over me and the rest of the patrons. After a while they raise the screen and kill the picture. On the middle screen was three rows of white boxes. The drummer, Josh Freese, came out from behind the curtain and interacted with it by turning some of the squares all red to start up “Echoplex”. They went on to do “God Given”, “Hurt” of course was a must, and finally closing with “In This Twilight” which was truly beautiful. For those unacquainted with the song it has a heavy tone to it but Trent melodically singing it making it rather eerie and surreal. On the back screen they projected a metropolis with a large factory in the background emitting smoke from two giant stacks. Across the city bombs were going off showing an attack from either terrorists or members of the resistance, couldn’t be known. At the end of the song a white hot flash of light came from the factory and panned up until “the sky is filled with light.” My first show with Nine Inch Nails and hopefully not my last. That’s all I got for this round. See you on the other side, folks.

Oh, and to close out this piece I’ve enclosed another video. This didn’t happen at the show I was at but I figured it’d be interesting to see regardless. Enjoy.

=Sketch/Ed

“Something’s Gonna Get Broken”

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