Live music review: Nine Inch Nails headlined debut Primavera Sound L.A.

Nine Inch Nails headlined day two of Primavera Sound L.A. delivering a trademark performance at the inaugural U.S. version of the highly regarded Spanish music festival that takes place each Spring in Barcelona. Bandleader, Trent Reznor mentioned that fact while on stage Saturday evening during his set at L.A. State Historic Park near downtown Los Angeles. Guest contributor, Ryan Cano, owner of Austin-based artist management company, The Loyalty Firm joined The Cosmic Clash at the festival…

Growing up in a large suburban city near Houston during the rise of the MTV era, so much music was presented across genres on various programs. Getting very into and making music at a young age, there was no way my parents were willing to drag me to every concert I begged to them to take me to. They most certainly were not taking me to shows where the singer would be matter-of-factly singing “Your God is dead and no one cares,” that’s for sure. As big a fan as I am, Primavera Sound L.A. offered my first opportunity to see the band live. I was long overdue.

I cannot remember where I first heard of Nine Inch Nails but there’s two possibilities. One option was via Riki Rachtman’s Headbangers Ball on MTV.  The other was more unconventional – via a bootleg live concert cassette. One of my friends’ older brothers was into recording shows. These cassettes would be dressed up with crudely made fake covers and other times just handwritten with venue, date and a set list. Those tapes started circulating among our circle of music fans. A cassette was delivered to me excitedly and I was quickly obsessed by NIN. They were angry, dark, dangerous, mysterious, dancy, but with an electronic element but then they’re also guitar heavy (in Jacob Givens’ voice).

Impressive music videos followed and that kept my attention on NIN. At some point I think even that weird Columbia House music subscription gave me the debut LP as one of 10 CDs for a penny. As a big music nerd who’d study the line notes of albums, I wanted to soak it all in: What are the lyrics? Who wrote the songs, who produced this? Who engineered and mixed? What is the publishing company and who is the band’s And there it was, a phrase all NIN fans have come to know: Nine Inch Nails is Trent Renzor. 

Eventually, the group became titans amongst the industrial and alt-rock genre while forging their own legacy that earned them entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020.  

These days Nine Inch Nails is Reznor and Atticus Ross, two names you may recognize from the film scoring duo of some wide-release, big studio films in recent years, netting them Oscar and Golden Globe awards along the way. Since their pairing, Reznor has been incredibly prolific between film projects and new music from Nine Inch Nails.

World events delayed the launch of Primavera Festival LA and when the fest was announced that the debut would happen this year with a stellar lineup, the name Nine Inch Nails just kept speaking to me. The drought from the live concert experience brought on by the pandemic made me realize that it’s time to prioritize seeing acts that have slipped through the cracks over the years. Cut to connecting with The Cosmic Clash and here I was, chilling in Los Angeles State Historic Park awaiting my first experience seeing these legends.

The audience swelled before the Primavera Stage headliners appeared amongst a heavy layer of fog machine smoke. A large and enthusiastic crowd erupted as band members set their places behind their instruments. Then those first guitar strums that walk up, almost like music when Jaws approaches on show opener ‘Somewhat Damaged’ from 1999 double LP The Fragile. Drums start pounding, Reznor’s voice soars across the park and then fans heard the major theme of the night: dark, heavy, arpeggiated snyth keys that pulse as heavy as the bass. “This machine is obsolete” is sung and the stadium lights lined up from the side stage and behind the band starts to flash as the entire set explodes into a giant strobe that at times obscures the band from view, in a wash of blinding, white light.

The first four songs to open the show (full set list below) were just brutal, pummeling, classic Nine Inch Nails: Somewhat Damaged, Wish, Heresy and March of the Pigs. Fans needed a moment to catch their breath. Everything I love about their heaviest songs were represented to invite you into their musical world, to escape into the show. Nearly every single person around me was shouting every word back to the band. From the initial note of each track, the crowd was losing their minds. The audience was fully engaged and ready.

The set NIN delivered was a career-spanning, non-stop 75 minutes of music that threaded the needle between well-known classics, fan favorites and some deeper cuts. Sonically ebbing and flowing between heavy, dance-oriented to several tender moments that can also define some of the band’s greatest contributions to their catalog. 

Midway through the performance, one of the more recent tracks from the band, ‘God Break Down the Door’ from the 2018 EP ‘Bad Witch’, was a big highlight and featured a surprising moment when Trent busted out a saxophone to kickstart the song! Witnessing this song live, I connected elements from the vocal delivery and some of the psychedelic free sax jazz happening over the warbling keyboards to Bowie’s final album Blackstar. 

                    

At the end of the concert, a high energy and slightly extended version of ‘Head Like a Hole’ fed into the traditional set closer, “Hurt.”  The song was sung in a way that made you believe the pain was still acute, recent and very real despite it’s age. This is the sign of a great performer… when the music they’ve rehearsed and perfected over the years feels as raw as the time they first wrote it. The vulnerable track features an ever present guitar strum and crackling noise where the aural dynamics will fade into near silence and creep back upwards above the vocals and back down again into the final line of the night, “I will find a way”, that gets buried in cacophony of heavy noise. Set over, no encore. 

Exhilaration set in… what a ride we just took! The sound quality was flawless, the California vibes were impeccable and the light show was incredible. The band that backs Reznor and Ross, forming Nine Inch Nails (2022) are flawless and unrelenting. The way the lights would frame the band made concertgoers pay close attention to the emotional heights of every song.

Never a dull moment. The Primavera Festival LA set was definitely not a 75-minute “greatest hits” show, something the band could have easily done. This was a complete masterclass in putting together a deep and emotional set list that flowed across their entire catalog and still left you wanting more. Just like the way one of NIN’s many great albums will make you feel. This will definitely not be my last NIN concert. I will find a way to see them again.

Spotify playlist of NIN Primavera Sound L.A. set: 

 NIN Setlist 9/17/2022

Somewhat Damaged
Wish
Heresy
March of the Pigs
Sanctified
The Lovers
Less Than
Reptile
Closer
God Break Down the Door
The Perfect Drug
Copy of a
Gave Up
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like a Hole
Hurt

All photos by Christopher Alvarez