After all these years, Nine Inch Nails still knows how to raise the stakes.
As the band’s two-night stand at United Center kicked off Tuesday night, the industrial rock kingpins took a huge gamble with their perennial hit “Closer.” Rather than perform the ‘90s zeitgeist track as written (and as heard a million times on alt-rock radio), frontman Trent Reznor opted to strip away half the band, move over to a second, smaller stage and pivot the song to a reworked bass-heavy club mix alongside right-hand man Atticus Ross and producer/tour opener Boys Noize.
No band in its right mind would take its signature song and reduce it to a remix in a high-stakes return tour — unless the band is Nine Inch Nails.
Reznor is not here to help us rehash memories of being a teenager and blasting the expletive-laced song on our headphones so our moms wouldn’t hear. He never has been. And it’s clear NIN’s latest tour — the band’s first since 2022 — is keen to form new synapses and bring time-tested music into modernity while also evolving Nine Inch Nails’ identity. This is no longer just an aggressive rock band steeped in nihilism and dread; it’s a suite of composers who are ready to shift the mood.
For years, film score wizards Reznor and Ross have been putting their cinematic sonic touches on everything from “The Social Network” and “Soul” to “Gone Girl” and their latest, “Tron: Ares” while racking up Oscars and Grammys. Yet the composing has always lived on the periphery of Nine Inch Nails — until now.
“I think some lines are going to get blurred,” Reznor told Consequence in 2024 about the two worlds beginning to coexist. There are signs it’s already happening. Tapping Boys Noize for the tour’s opener was an obvious wink; the producer recently worked with Reznor and Ross on remixes for the “Challengers” soundtrack. NIN also added “As Alive As You Need Me To Be” to the set, the lead song from the “Tron: Ares” soundtrack, which credits NIN as the composers for the first time. Not long after the band’s Peel It Back Tour wraps this fall, Reznor and Ross will also reenter the stage at their helmed Future Ruins festival, a first-of-its-kind event curated solely with film and TV composers.
The Peel It Back Tour has become the perfect launchpad to nurture this creative fluidity as NIN enters its latest era. During the 100-minute exposé, NIN doesn’t just peel back the façade all the Gen X goths in the crowd have clung to for decades; they get straight down to the bones of what’s lurking below the surface and the creative minds behind it.
The setup of the night is incredibly demonstrative of these parallels. There are two stages, one a typical oversized rock ring to accommodate the full touring band, which is completed by guitarist Robin Finck, bassist/keyboardist Alessandro Cortini and drummer Josh Freese, who just rejoined NIN for the first time since 2008, taking over for Ilan Rubin, who left for the Foo Fighters. Together, the full unit performed blitzkrieg versions of “March of the Pigs” and “Heresy” while surrounded by a series of giant screens and strobe/shadow effects that made the entire performance seem like a 4D fever dream. But then there was the smaller stage in the center of the arena where everything was dialed back and re-examined, like in the reworked version of “Closer.” The show actually started there, with a whisper rather than a scream in a total about-face to NIN’s previous MO. Reznor appeared solo for the first numbers, including the piano-led soliloquy, “A Minute To Breathe” and a reimagined soft take on “Ruiner” where a mostly reverent crowd (save for the obnoxious Trent cat callers) gave him proper space to explore and extrapolate the numbers into more symphonic arrangements. The intro was a beautiful exercise in restraint for both Reznor and the near-cap crowd who were soon rewarded for their patience as the full band joined starting on “Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)” and were masterful the rest of the way through.
The Peel It Back Tour isn’t a total departure from the dystopian NIN that’s been rattling cages for 37 years. The five-piece still packs in the unmistakable wall of sound and fury into the 20-song set list, with high marks for “Wish” and “Gave Up” from the “Broken” EP that drew out a massive mosh pit and proves that the 1992 extended play will always be a musical unicorn for its transformative nature for NIN and rare success for the format. The set also featured the band’s go-tos, including a cover of Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans” and set ender “Hurt” as well as an earth-shaking delivery of “The Perfect Drug,” which was a litmus test for Freese — NIN never performed the complicated song live in his tenure. He passed with honors.
But the new template this time around offered a front-row invitation to see a music act continue to evolve in real time. It’s how Reznor has always done it, savvy in his efforts to eclipse any chance for NIN to become niche — how else would an industrial band get inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and sell 30 million albums? Reznor has never been afraid of risk, and his wagers continue to pay off.
Nine Inch Nails returns to United Center Wednesday.
Nine Inch Nails Aug. 20 United Center Set List
A Minute to Breathe
Ruiner
Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)
Wish
March of the Pigs
Reptile
Heresy
Copy of A
Gave Up
Vessel (with Boys Noize)
Closer (with Boys Noize)
As Alive as You Need Me to Be (with Boys Noize)
Came Back Haunted (with Boys Noize)
Mr. Self Destruct
Less Than
The Perfect Drug
I’m Afraid of Americans (David Bowie cover)
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like a Hole
Hurt