Photo: Debbie VanStory/ RockinExposures for RollingStone
Trent Reznor came to Los Angeles to end it all. Two decades after releasing his first Nine Inch Nails album, Reznor brought the band’s life as a touring act to a close Thursday with a sweeping three-hour concert at the Wiltern Theater, erupting with sounds intense and emotional from throughout his career for a full house of more than 2,200 fans.
He ended NIN at full power, not nostalgic but fully engaged, and still an important contemporary act long after the band’s ’90s breakout. Reznor led guitarist Robin Finck, bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen and drummer Ilan Rubin through a 38-song set that mingled their best-known work with songs from The Slip, released in May as a free download, returning the band to the brooding, ambitious sounds explored to epic proportions on 1999’s The Fragile.
Photos from Nine Inch Nails’ last-ever live show.
“This is it,” Reznor said early in the set, and added during the night’s third encore: “We’re not going to tour anymore as Nine Inch Nails, but we’re all still going to be making music.”
The big room was already sweltering and filled with fog by the time the lights went down and Reznor stepped up to the microphone, lunging forward and clutching his mike stand as desperately as ever for “Somewhat Damaged.” He raged across the layers of industrial noise and melody: “Poisoned to my rotten core / Too fucked up to care anymore!”
There was no “Closer,” but the night delivered a generous selection from the range of NIN’s recorded work. Songs raged and flowed from one to the next as if from a single piece of music, a consistent vision across decades holding the night together. Fans shouted along to lyrics of loathing and release during “...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily