Nine Inch Nails At Nottingham Capital FM Arena REVIEW

Photo © Nottingham Confidential

After calling it a day in 2009, with a twenty year career that spawned countless releases, Grammy awards and worldwide recognition behind him, Trent Reznor has revived the Nine Inch Nails name for another worldwide trek in 2014.

Nine Inch Nails has always been one man (Reznor) on record, with a huge roster of talented musicians joining him for live performances – like an electro-gothic Mike Oldfield. Certain members of this backing band roster have become fan favourites, and it's nice to see two of them back in the band for this tour - Robin Finck and Alessandro Cortini. So with all of the ingredients in place for a classic return, thousands of excited fans piled into the Capital FM Arena to experience the show they thought might never happen again.

Never one to disappoint, Trent's 2014 show covers all areas of the NIN catalogue. Newer material from recent years such as Everything, Disappointed and All Time Low from 2013's Hesitation Marks album sit well with the audience, and don't seem out of place compared to the much older and more well known “greatest hits” represented tonight. The band have been playing a slightly different set each night, with the classic 1989 track Terrible Lie being a treat for the Nottingham audience only so far. There are certain songs one would expect to hear from Trent tonight and indeed he did deliver the classics Closer, Head Like a Hole and March of the Pigs to a frenzied crowd. The set list perfectly marries the old and new seamlessly, keeping current and old school fans alike on side.

Having seen Trent performing as Nine Inch Nails back in 2007, I knew that a highlight of the show would be the song Hurt, the band's most famous song (which you may also know from the 2003 cover by Johnny Cash.) From the seminal 1994 album The Downward Spiral, Hurt has always been thought of as Trent at his most honest and vulnerable. Tonight at Capital FM Arena, NIN closed the show with the song, thousands of voices singing along in unison up to the final crash of drums – a truly had-to-be-there moment, with an atmosphere that cannot be described in words.

The crowd tonight were clearly glad that NIN are back on stage, and judging by the performance, so were they.

Photo © Nottingham Confidential