| Perhaps Trent just has his cranky pants on:
ROCK REVIEW
NINE INCH NAILS
The Metro, city, May 13
It was all going so well. At the first of three nights at the Metro on Sunday, Trent Reznor and band were in searing form, tearing through the catalogue of his musical alter-ego Nine Inch Nails.
Indeed, almost everything on Sunday night (except for the Metro's bar prices) felt like a throwback to those halcyon days of 1995. Reznor's black-clad devotees even endeavoured to dress as such. The highlight of a crowd that prided itself on presentation: a petite, dreadlocked woman with a T-shirt administering the most sanguine of messages: "I Love Gay Porn."
Guitarist Twiggy - who used to play with another 1990s vestige, Marilyn Manson - even indulged in that most 1990s of concert activities, stage-diving, during a frenzied guitar solo early in the show.
This week's shows mark Reznor's fourth visit to Melbourne. His latest album, Year Zero, is a concept album that basically re-imagines the US as a police state 15 years in the future. It's an overwhelmingly paranoid and cynical stab at political and social commentary.
Although the excitable crowd were clearly craving material from Reznor's unsurpassed career highlight, the 1994 album The Downward Spiral, the new songs sounded excellent. There's the strangely hypnotic single Survivalism, The Beginning Of The End (which boasts an intro eerily reminiscent of My Sharona) and the almost catchy Capital G.
Midway through the show, the tide slightly turned. When a device with a keyboard and a laptop joined together was rolled on stage, "technical issues" lent an eight-minute pause to the show.
Reznor apologised, in his own way, blaming computer issues. Clearly agitated, he pressed on. The evening's most compelling moment should have been Reznor alone behind a keyboard playing his aching torch song, Hurt. Yet after a punter audibly inquired about Reznor's post-show activities midway through the intensely personal track, Reznor abruptly stopped playing.
"Am I supposed to pretend I can't hear an arsehole yelling at me?" he sneered. "Let's move on," he said, to a chorus of boos, as he terminated the track and lurched into The Hand That Feeds.
As that song ended, he slung his guitar in disgust, skulked off stage and the house lights immediately came on. There was clearly no encore (and therefore no hits such as Head Like A Hole, Perfect Drug, or career highpoint Closer).
Bemused fans mulled about for a time, patently confounded by Reznor's show-closing tantrum. The outburst was particularly disappointing considering that this was the first of three shows and his most fervent followers in Melbourne would have been in attendance. And it was going so well . . .
Nine Inch Nails play their final Melbourne show tonight. Tickets still available.
Anyone go????
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