Nine Inch Nails amazed with their ‘Tension’ tour at the Don Haskins Center with their versatile stage, the incredible and unique lighting and their most recent material from the album “Hesitations Marks.”
The concert started with a black curtain falling, smog covering the pitch-black stage and white lights coming from the top as each band member slowly appeared on stage. The show opened with their recent album’s single “Copy of A,” and as recent as it may be, the live version was better than the studio version.
Nine Inch Nails came up with a combined set list from their past albums and their most recent material such as “1,000,000,” “Terrible Lie,” “March of Pigs” and “All Time Low,” showing off both old and new colors, with dynamic changes within their new songs staying very true to their industrial rock side.
“Tension” is NIN first tour since 2009, but (their) sound was still top quality and as loud as anyone would expect from a NIN show.
We all know that a sign of a good concert is when the audience, no matter how far away, can feel the vibrations due to high volume and good quality of the music—and NIN delivered. The music was loud, the many instruments played were distinguishable and the voice, although at times lacking, was there. Having acoustic drums definitely complimented the performance very well.
The show was quite enjoyable because of the music, yet it wouldn’t have been the same without the outstanding lighting and the ever-changing stage that transformed just as much as a transformer would, which of course was a good thing.
From the beginning, flashing white lights were all over the set, and although they quickly became annoying, they changed to shades of blue, green, red and yellow—really depending on the mood of the song. And if it was not enough, the stage had things coming from above at every song, such as lighting panels, screens and even what seemed to be a curtain of all color LED lights.
The repertoire consisted of 26 songs with “The Day the World Went Away,” “Reptile,” “We Take Mystery (To Bed),” “Even Deeper,” “While I’m Still Here,” “Black Noise” and “Hurt” as encore, making the concert well worthy of the price it demanded.
Opening the show for NIN was Explosions in the Sky, whose instrumental music felt in sync with the music and ambiance of NIN, but not many hardcore NIN fans could have seen the connection because of the experimental side of the former.
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