NIN Nails Pemberton Opening Night
The final act on the opening night of the Pemberton Music Festival was Nine Inch Nails. It was the first show of the band's North American tour and, clearly, Trent Reznor and Co. wanted to make a very big impression. They did. If Chromeo ruled the earlier portion of the day, these mainstream industrial metallists proved its mettle as the night one headliners:
So, in honour of the name, nine reasons why I liked Nine Inch Nails' show:
1. ?Closer?: OK, the band has a lot of popular albums. But many don't connect with the wide-ranging fan base up here. That said, this song with it's unprintable refrain about engaging your partner in sexual relations that are bestial went over like a cue to start bumping and grinding. Case in point, the three women in the VIP area who went from group dance to group grope to the applause of the surrounding crowd.
2. The Production: The lighting rig for this was awesome. Particularly, the fallen digital curtain that appeared to respond to the band's heat registry making eerie halos around them as the samples triggered.
3. The Building Riff: One characteristic of the group's sound is its ability to create anticipation and tension in ever-increasing waves by pummelling riffs that layer upon one another only to fracture out into surprising turns.
4. The Surprising Turns.: How about going from a full on three guitar army to one simple, lonely beat. From chaos to near silence. Holy impact.
5. The Implied Dance Beats: As basically a straight-ahead metal act, it's the way that tunes such as ?Terrible Lie? and other Downward Spiral classics fit in a techno groove that somehow finds its way out of the mix and onto the dancefloor.
6. Trent Reznor's Physicality: Good frontmen give it up and he does. Hurling his body about and tossing mic stands around without concern of being bashed by them when they land is pretty rock.
7. Enduring Creation: With a huge back catalogue, the group still inserts a good deal of new material into every set and the songs played from The Slip as well as at least one instrumental from Ghosts kept it interesting for fans.
8. The Whole Black Thing: A band that can fly the leather and rubber into its second decade and still look cool doing it is a very rare thing. These guys can do it. Of course, Rezor's turning into the Joe Piscopo of hard music since sobering up is a factor. Dude is BUFF.
9. Danger; Implied or Otherwise: The number of punters on site who thought that some kind of aggro-riot would follow NIN's performance was amusing ? it so didn't happen ? but proves that the group still has that most important cachet; fear factor. Without it, why would the kids keep listening.
And so night number one rolls into Junkie XL's set at the Bacardi B-Live tent and the deafening buzz of hungry critters that make your basic mosquito look like a Godzilla. Kinda cool when you rub down your arm and have a trail of blood (yours) and guts (theirs) in the aftermath.
More music tomorrow in what looks to be a better line-up than today in pretty much every way. Although there are a lot of media here who won't shut up about the dour and over-appreciated Interpol.
Oh well, that's music critics for yez.
http://communities.canada.com/theprovince/blogs/stuartsblog/archive/2008/07/26/nin-nails-pemberton-opening-night.aspx999 999
1 000 000
Letting You
Discipline
March of the Pigs
Head Down
The Frail
Piggy
Closer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGpeuBTbypkGave Up
Corona Radiata
The Warning
The Great Destroyer
Echoplex
Wish
Terrible Lie
Survivalisim
31 Ghosts IV
The Big Comedown
Only
God Given
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like a Hole
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