Nine Inch Nails - Main stage
After seeing this show, you would be forgiven for thinking that you were witnessing not just a headlining act, but an Orwellian epiphany of the future.
After a musical interlude, lulling the audience into a false sense of security, Trent Reznor sprinted onto the stage donned with militaristic apparel, including a fascist-looking armband, and the tone of the performance was set; it was not simply going to be a legendary band playing a number of stirring tracks from a back catalogue spanning over two decades, but Reznor utilising his chance to propagate the ideas behind his latest album, ‘Year Zero’, a masterful critique of where this world is heading.
Beginning the set with the forebodingly titled, ‘The Beginning of the End’, NIN showed their ability to put on a show that can’t easily be forgotten –for a multitude of reasons. Sweeping across the stage like a genocide surrounded by the flames of an unwanted regime, the band launched into ‘Survivalism’, a bitter attack on Reznor’s envisaged future with the chanting of armies fighting for an elapsed cause in the background.
Their ironclad performance eventually hit the undulating, rhythmic dance, ‘Closer’, a song that inspires crude sexual behaviour in the coyest of us with its intrusively pulsing bass. The classic was easily recognisable, but with bookends either side that made it appropriate within the context of the performance – indeed, all the tracks played that evening were totally in key with the rebelliously inspired theme running through it and of a superb studio-quality, but then again, would we expect anything less than perfect from Trent Reznor?
Suddenly Reading Festival had become all about NIN and the stage-show that the fortunate audience were witnessing. Converting milestone tracks, such as ‘Gave Up’, to the Year Zero cause, everything was not quite as it seemed – tracks the audience loved were becoming loud and oppressive, like the authoritarian regime that was being criticised, with a blood-red light being cast across the whole band. This incredible stage show continued, with the band forming a triumvirate in front of green LEDs, so that only their silhouettes were visible, for the track ‘Me, I’m Not’, giving an eerie presence peering over the crowd. This part of the act saw the band using outlandish and unrecognisable instruments, as if we were actually peering into the future, then having our minds contorted with another rendition of a track from the inspirational album ‘Downward Spiral’, ‘I Do Not Want This’.
It was a relentless, all-encompassing, brutal sound, with a backdrop of television static and equally distorted, electric sounds – suddenly Orwell’s Big Brother was watching the audience, with what looked like a massive, dysptopian conversion screen - and it worked. The whole crowd were indoctrinated into the cause. Reznor subverted tracks, such as ‘Eraser’ and ‘The Hand That Feeds’, just as his fictional government was subverting the lives of its denizens, at one stage the band being trapped behind the bars of oppression themselves, with a massive cage being lowered in front of them.
The first, and only time, Reznor directly addressed the crowd was to announce his classic cover of the Joy Division’s ‘Dead Souls’, which was wholly appreciated by the audience. After performing ‘Head Like a Hole’, Reznor outstretched his arms, as if he were a rock messiah being crucified for spreading the word of NIN, and the audience gladly bowed before him. With an encore of ‘Hurt’ to a background of electric tears falling to the floor - and Reznor crying with sweat - NIN’s set did exactly what the theme’s government did not do – give the masses exactly what they wanted.
James Wright
