Concert: Nine Inch Nails

I was going to upload pictures, but the picture function is acting funny - it makes a big gray box with a tiny version of the picture in the corner. What's up with that?

So anyway, I went to Nine Inch Nails in Nashville on Halloween and man, it rocked. Queens of the Stone Age opened for them and they were one of the better opening acts that I've seen in a while - solid rocking, no more, no less. NIN put on a really kick ass visual show, playing the first song with transparent curtains all around the stage to hold a really dense cloud of smoke that they shot strobes, spotlights, and a huge assortment of multicolored lights through. Later in the set they lowered the curtain again and projected film onto it. That was neat, cuz you could still see the band through the curtain, but the images were on top of them. Otherwise, they played an extremely heavy and aggressive set that never let up on the energy. The guitarist kept doing these crazy ninja acrobatics with his guitar, leaping all over the place and swinging the guitar wildly but somehow never missing a note.

Also, they flung about twenty mics into the crowd. The roadies were pretty impressive. I figure less than a 3 second gap between a thrown mic or a flung mic stand before a new one was up. The set itself was sweet, consisting mostly of songs from their first 3 albums, but avoiding the singles. They played a bunch of sweet songs I wouldn't have expected like "Burn," (Natural Born Killers soundtrack, "Eraser" a cool building song that they used the projecter for, and "Reptile." Also, "Terrible Lie" kicked total ass, and they added an extra verse onto Closer. Most notable as a performance, though, was "Right Where it Belongs," the last track of the latest album.

Recommend: Hells yes, provided you like violently aggressive rocking while surrounded by people in costume.