The Many Voices of News of the World

Was indulging my baroque side that extends a bit past metal's boundaries by rocking out to Queen's News of the World earlier today when it occurred to me how many of the tracks had been covered by at least one other artist:

• "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions:" two of Queen's most well-known tracks have undergone a whole host of treatments, including various re-recordings by different versions of the Queen lineup years after the band's demise. I'm pretty sure I don't plan to go out and find any of them, either.
• "Sheer Heart Attack:" Helloween recorded a version, but the band that crept out of a dark recess of my mind when I thought about covers of this song was Sam Black Church, who released a live recording of the song as a bonus track on Superchrist in 1995.
• "Spread Your Wings:" Germans who love ostentatious metal seem to love Queen, too: Blind Guardian took the far more genre-appropriate "Spread Your Wings" and recorded a pretty kickin' version for Somewhere Far Beyond.
• "Get Down, Make Love:" much like The Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)," Queen's psychedelic celebration of free love was begging to be re-recorded in a more twisted form by an artist with the right chops. Nine Inch Nails did so in 1990, releasing the cover as a b-side on the single for the equally bondage-heavy "Sin."
  

NIN/JA at PNC Bank Arts Center

In cooking, it is the combination of the ingredients, the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, that the gourmet enjoys the most. A freshly-caught fish, for example, no matter how delicious on its own, can become a part of a far more sublime experience when combined with the right supplementary flavors. In the same way, while each portion of the NIN/JA experience was a good time by itself, it was the combination of the three bands, the surprisingly wide variety of styles of "rock," and the limitations on their set times that forced a focus on stronger material that made NIN/JA a much better show in sum than it might well have been in pieces - and I say that even after my sublime Nine Inch Nails experience in northern New Jersey last summer.

The Street Sweeper Social Club came out swinging: all five members in glasses and military-style jackets, laying down a funky rock track that supported Boots Riley as he bopped and spun around the stage. All three bands had all kinds of energy, but the Street Sweeper Social Club had the kind of energy you see in footage of classic punk rock shows, each member careening through their space like meteorites on a mission of collision. Their music was infectious, Boots looked he'd originated the concept of cool, and seeing Tom Morello live makes all of those great sounds he's put into recordings seem as pale as shadows in sunlight: when he gets going, the man absolutely smokes.

Nine Inch Nails opted for a set list that focused pretty heavily on the rage-filed portions on their catalog, with strong doses of Broken, The Downward Spiral, Year Zero, and the songs of alienation from The Slip (think "1,000,000" and "Echoplex"). The energy might have dragged a bit in the middle with a selection from The Fragile and one of the tracks from Ghosts - which is tougher to translate live without the heavy visuals from Lights in the Sky - but a strong finish with a string of the band's hits ("Survivalism," "The Hand That Feeds," "Head Like A Hole") roped in the crowd in time for a closing rendition of "Hurt" in the deepening twilight. My favorite moment from the whole set: watching Robin Finck stalk around the stage during "Reptile." Close second (and pictured to the left): the lights going absolutely apeshit during the end of "Mr. Self Destruct," pulsing so rapidly that Robin looked like a vision out of a drug trip.

And then there was Jane's Addiction, rocking their original line up and looking to bring a large group of people (most of whom appeared out of nowhere when the NIN fans disappeared during the break) on a trip back through their old school material. Just looking at the four of them, you can almost see why they broke up: if Farrell and Navarro are rock via Van Halen, Avery - and to a lesser extent, Perkins - are rock via Black Flag and seeing the two styles together on stage seems to define incongruity. And yet when they play, the differences disappear in the moment it takes for the first notes to peal through the amplifiers. Avery and Perkins provide the foundation, Navarro builds the sweeping structures and adds the lofty touches, and Farrell...well, as Seth put it at one point in the show: Perry Farrell in any other band is David Lee Roth, owning the stage, drinking from a bottle of wine between songs, slapping fives with the audience in the front row. I wouldn't call myself a big enough fan to go see the band headline a show on their own, but in this context it was a great setup and an excellent way to end the night.

Paul and Steve; Trent and Marilyn

Maybe it's something in the water, but today seems to be the day for people with long-over associations to trash them heavily: Paul Di'Anno took Steve Harris to task for being controlling and powering a boring band, while Trent Reznor thinks Marilyn Manson is simultaneously a backstabber and a disappointment to himself that was pushed to being a jerk because he and Trent had a falling out.  And yes, it took me three tries to write that last sentence because Trent's quote really reads like he's trying to excuse Manson while calling him out:

"Things got shitty between us and I'm not blameless," Reznor admitted. "The majority of it though was coming from a resentment guy who finally got out from under the master's umbrella and was able to stab him in the back."

Fun stuff for a slow afternoon.

BBB Field Trip!

The BBB team has scored third row center seats for this summer's Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction tour!

That's it.

Nothing profound, just gloating.

The NINJA Tour and Tom Morello's Missing Credit

In a case of fun coincidence, I was listening to Audioslave's first album this morning and wondering whether or not last year's Rage Against the Machine reunion tour had produced any new material, and now I see that Tom Morello's new band has joined the NIN/Jane's Addiction tour as an opener.

Speaking of Audioslave, though: notice what band isn't listed in Morello's credits? Makes you wonder if the omission was accidental, or if Morello has written off that entire period of his life as a big mistake that only helped move Chris Cornell one step further down the road to legacy destruction.

Josh Freese, American Hero

Josh Freese is the drummer for Nine Inch Nails, DEVO, and other bands that are not as Baroque, Bleak, Brutal approved as the first two. He has just officially forever upped the ante with his alternate distribution packages. Personally, I want to go to a strip club with Mark Mothersbaugh! Perhaps even more so than mini golfing with him. Someone call Bob Lefsetz stat!

$7
-Digital Download of "Since 1972" (including 3 videos)

$15
-CD/DVD Double Disc Set
-Digital Download

$50
-CD/DVD Double Disc Set
-T-shirt
-"Thank You" phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like "Is Maynard really THAT weird?" or "Which on of Sting's mansions has the comfiest beds?" or "Are Devo really Suburban Robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of Dads from Ohio?" or "Why don't the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?" It's your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

$250 (limited edition of 25)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt
-Signed Drum Head and Drumsticks.
-Go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you're into.)

$500 (limited edition of 15)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download
-T-shirt
-Signed Cymbal and sticks
-Meet Josh in Venice, CA and go floating together in a Sensory deprivation tank (filmed and posted on youtube)
-Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 Steak and "all you can eat" Shrimp on)

$1,000 (limited edition of 10)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt
-Signed Cymbal, Drum head and Drumsticks.
-Josh washes your car OR does your laundry....or you can wash his car.
-Have dinner with Josh aboard the "Queen Mary" in Long Beach, CA
-Get drunk and cut each other's hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on youtube of course)

$2,500 (limited edition of 5)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-Get a private drum lesson with Josh or for all you non-drummers have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome)
-Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or DEVO (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the "Spearmint Rhino"
-Signed DW snare drum.
-Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve)
-Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)

$5,000 (limited edition of 3)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt
-Josh writes about a song about you and make available on iTunes.
-Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the youtubes.
-Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland
-Get drunk together. If you don't drink we can go to my Dads place and hang out under the "Tuba tree"
-Stone from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on "Since 1972"

$10,000 (limited edition of 1)
-Signed CD/ DVD and digital download
-T-shirt
-Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle's 2003 tour.
-Josh gives you a private drum lesson OR his and hers foot/back massage (couples welcome, discreet parking)
-Twiggy from Manson's band and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe's Chicken n' Waffle in Long Beach for dinner.
-Josh takes you and guest to "Club 33" (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above the Pirates Of The Caribbean) and then hit a couple rides afterwards (preferably the Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion and The Tower Of Terror)
-At the end of the day at Disneyland drive away in Josh's Volvo station wagon. It's all yours....take it. Just drop him off on your way home though please.

$20,000 (limited edition of 1)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt
-A signed drum from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour.
-Maynard James Keenan, Mark from Devo and Josh take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on youtube)
-Josh gives you a tour of Long Beach. See his first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd St where his buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up tile just weeks before joining "Nirvana." See the old Vandals rehearsal spot, the liquor store he got busted using a Fake I.D. at when he was 17 (it was Dave from the Vandals old ID). Go check out Snoop Dogg's high- school. For an extra 50 bucks see where Tom and Adrian from No Doubt live.=2 0For another $25 he'll show ya where Eric from NOFX and Brooks from Bad Religion get their hair cut.
-Spend the night aboard the Queen Mary and take the "Ghosts And Legends" tour. (separate rooms...no spooning.)
-Josh writes 2 songs about you and it's made available on iTunes and appears on his next record (you can sing back up on em, clap, play the drums, triangle, whatever....)
-Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again...couples welcome and discreet parking available)
-Pick any 3 items out of Josh's closet.

$75,000 (limited edition of 1)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download
-T-shirt
-Go on tour with Josh for a few days.
-Have Josh write, record and release a 5 song EP about you and your life story.
-Take home any of his drumsets (only one but you can choose which one.)
-Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL's Lamborgini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while.
-Josh will join your band for a month...play shows, record, party with groupies, etc....
-If you don't have a band he'll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
-Take a limo down to Tijuana and he'll show you how it's done (what that means exactly we can't legally get into here)
-If you don't live in Southern California (but are a US resident) he'll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks.
-Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robin's place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna.

Everything Is Blue In This World

The mind of Trent Reznor is a mysterious thing. After two years of living in the rarefied air of a label-free existence, releasing two stellar albums, completing a tour that was tour de force as much as it was series of concerts, and tapping into the communal world of the Internet far more effectively than any other high-profile musician, Reznor is...hanging things up. Really? That's it? From forefront of the revolution to farewell tour in a few short weeks?

Speculation time: from the number of mentions Reznor has made in his blog about the difficulties he ran into executing the Lights in the Sky tour (including one in the farewell post) - and this from a guy who clearly has no problems communicating only what he wants the public to know - I suspect burnout. It's tough fighting against the inertia of an industry and it has to be even tougher when half of your band decides to part ways. It just seems a shame to go on hiatus (again) when the momentum has really started rolling again.

Trent Reznor producing new Jane's Addiction record?

How did this come about?

All week Trent has been posting on his blog pictures of him in the studio with Stephen Perkins and Eric Avery.

Now he just posted this: http://ninblogs.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/a-look-at-something-else-thats-been-going-on-pt-4/

I thought nothing could have me at all interested in a new Jane's Addiction album. And suddenly, everything has changed.......

Trent Reznor Talks the Next NIN Tour

Trent rocks a little philosophical discussion about the accelerating speed of art consumption with the guys from Pink is the New Blog in this interview. Some of it comes off as a little cranky, but I get his point: instant access to information means that we churn through anything we can consume, including art (and I'm sure that concept makes an artist shudder). Keeping someone's attention long enough for them to actually appreciate what you're trying to do has to be more difficult now that the audience is less and less captive.

For those more interested in practical matters, there's a tidbit for you, too: Reznor is sick of the stage show and the theatrical straitjacket it creates. For the next tour, he's planning on keeping things simple, eschewing bright lights and big screens for a set list that will rotate every night. I'll miss the big effects - and their elimination probably necessitates shortening the length of the show to keep people interested - but if he can schedule more than one date in New York, it might be worth seeing him twice to get the full scope of possible sets.

Top 10 Albums of 2008

It's probably late enough in the year to do one of these, right? These albums aren't in any particular order - I'll happily take the coward's way out and avoid the extremely difficult apples to oranges comparison that comes from trying to compare relative musical merit, particularly across genres - and aren't all metal. To merit possible inclusion on this list, the album had to meet two criteria:

• Have a US release date some time in 2008
• Have a siren-like ability to get me to listen over and over again, month after month.

Here's the list, with some commentary:

1. Rise Against - Appeal to Reason. I've had this album since the middle of October and I can't stop listening to it. Originally a Walmart project, it broke precedent by staying in my at-work iTunes list (reserved for albums I'm demoing for possible inclusion in my permanent collection home) for weeks after I turned in the description, because I needed it around to get a quick fix. I'm pretty sure every glorious track of this 13-song release has gotten stuck in my head at some point, no doubt because of the dozens of times I've played it. Really the most perfect piece of melodic hardcore I've heard since The Offspring put out Smash.
   
   
2. Metallica - Death Magnetic. Even though I have problems listening to this album all the way through because of the terrible mixing problems, the songs themselves are too good to ignore - and as I've commented on one occasion, they've acquired extracurricular meanings as well. Death Magnetic has seen enough controversy since before its release that I don't need to describe it any further: you've made your decision and chances are, you either love it or hate it. I think it's not only the best thing the band's done in years, but is a really strong Metallica album in its own right.
   
   
3. Opeth - Watershed. I think I'm well beyond the point where I'm able to speak objectively about Opeth, but that didn't stop me from trying with Ihsahn, so why not continue the charade? What I love most about Opeth is that although every album, when played in chronological order, fits into the progression that the band has followed up into Watershed, there's still something that makes the album stand out not only from the band's peers, but from its own siblings. In the case of Watershed, who would have thought that Black Metal and 70's AOR rock would mix so well and so convincingly? Brutality, majesty, a bit of the psychedelic aesthetic, the counterpoint guitar lines, and a hundred other little details that take hours of pleasurable listening to pull apart, all weaving together to create a magnificent addition to the catalog that is both unique and uniquely Opeth.
   
   
4. Eluveitie - Slania. These guys impressed me so much at Paganfest that I was a little concerned that their recordings wouldn't live up to the impact of their live show. Fortunately, I was dead wrong: Slania is gorgeous and powerful mix of metal and folk music, offering up singalong choruses (in English and Helvetican), dancable/slammable tunes, a heavy emphasis on swirling melody that doesn't sacrifice the potential for balls-out rawk, and an edge that makes the whole thing seem slightly mysterious (in an "entering another world" sense), not hokey. Check out "Slanias Song" for a good representation of how awesome this album - and the genre as a whole - can be.
   
   
5. The Dresden Dolls - No, Virginia.... What continues to amaze me about this album is that it's made up of remnants, b-sides, and compilation tracks - you know, the trash of recording sessions that's not quite good enough to put on the album but still worthy of salvaging - but it's still fucking fantastic. And not in a "that's good for a compilation" sense, but in an honest to goodness "this stands on its own as a strong album" sense. Quite possibly as a "best of The Dresden Dolls catalog" sense, which is pretty significant. I originally picked this one up as a Walmart assignment in June, loved it, then took a break for a few months. A couple of weeks ago, I cued it up again and remembered why it's so amazing. If you love The Dresden Dolls it's a must-own; if you've heard good things (or want to know how in the world a piano and drums can make really good punk rock), No, Virginia... is an excellent place to start.
   
   
6. Keep of Kalessin - Kolossus. I believe I have the guys at Metal Sucks to thank for turning me on to this album. Why do I love it? Black metal, in my opinion, is a genre just begging to mix it up with progressive rock idioms: the common love of the grandiose in both genres makes a natural fit. Keep of Kalessin not only gets this idea, but they understand how to weave the two elements together to create progressive black metal that's actually still black: Kolossus is ripe with well-placed blast beats, a strong mix of bleak arpeggiation and high-speed riffing, and lyrics about individual struggle against titanic forces - and empire building on the backs of a thousand corpses. The whole package is probably best exemplified by "The Rising Sign," which moves from a brilliant syncopated opening riff to an Amon Amarth-style explosion to a chorus with one hell of an epic hook to an acoustic bridge that rivals Ihsahn for atmospherics with envy-creating ease.
   
   
7. The Sword - Gods of the Earth. I know these guys are basically Black Sabbath for the new millenium, but between the sledgehammer riffs, the distant wail of J. D. Cronise on the microphone, and the songs about war, frost giants, and George R. R. Martin novels, I don't particularly care: I'm in love with the music, dammit, and we're moving in together next month. Turn on "How Heavy This Axe," crank up the volume, find a suitable stimulant and drift off into fantasies of braining someone with a large piece of sharp steel.
   
8. Gama Bomb - Citizen Brain. While it's true there are plenty of thrash revival bands out there these days, Gama Bomb seems to have this - admittedly derivative - genre down to a science on Citizen Brain: every song thrashes in the best head banging style, the singer sounds like he takes himself just seriously enough to sing properly while still having fun, and the songs...let's just say that any album that has fun songs about rampaging zombies, using time travel to commit crimes, being sentenced to thrash, RoboCop, Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and General Zod gets a big gold star in my book.
   
   
9. Ihsahn - angL. I've read from interviews that Ihsahn is a huge perfectionist who is never happy with the recordings he puts out because they never quite live up to his expectations. I imagine each of his recordings to be like darts hitting an already small target of tremendous results: with each throw, he gets closer and closer to that point of menetal perfection. angL is the majesty of the Emperor recordings mixed with beautiful, bleak atmospherics that tempt you to step inside - and possesses your soul once you do. The duet with Mikael Akerfeldt in "Unhealer," where Akerfeldt's clean vocals, supported by a simple chorused guitar line and - of all things - a fretless bass build into the alternations of Akerfeldt and Ihsahn scorching out the chorus makes for a haunting, theatrical glory, almost akin to a gothic 19th century horror - and that's just one among equals.
   
   
10. Nine Inch Nails - The Slip. It's possible this album ended up on this list because of the concert this summer - which goes to show you how important touring can be - but I think what originally sold me on The Slip - besides liking Discipline enough to listen to it once a day after I originally downloaded it - was the rehearsal video of 1,000,000 NIN.com put out in June. As I said at the time, that video was like a four minute tutorial on how to rock...and it proved to be not only a very effective prequel for the live experience in August, but an excellent representation of this album's elegantly simple (if slightly schizophrenic) outlook. Soon enough, I was waking up with the chorus of "Echoplex" stuck in my head, or humming the tune to "Lights in the Sky." In other words, I was hooked for good.

Honorable mentions:

1. Arsis - We are the Nightmare.
2. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I - IV.
3. Protest the Hero - Fortress.
4. Emarosa - Relativity.
5. Testament - The Formation of Damnation.
   

AC/DC Practices Redemption

Yesterday, they were idiots who can't get with the times. Today, they're sort of keeping it real for the dedicated fan. I think:

Season-ticket holders, some of whom have paid as much as 25,000 Norwegian kroners (approximately $3,900) to have the first crack at concert tickets at the venue, were denied the opportunity to purchase AC/DC tickets ahead of everyone else because AC/DC refused to allow anyone but the "real fans" to buy tickets (meaning that there would be no pre-sale at all).

My Norwegian language skills are rusty (read: non-existent) and Google's aren't much better (an example: "AC / DC was bone hard that no one other than their fans would come at the concert. De vil ikke se andre enn fansen sin. They will not see anyone other than their fans." Heh..."bone hard"), but it seems that AC/DC isn't as money-obsessed as Brian Johnson's comments about iTunes might lead one to believe...or they're looking to maintain the veneer of working-class respectability by keeping things open and real for the people. Either way, if they're so interested in making sure only true fans get to see them when they play in Norway (or anywhere else), they might want to consider going the NIN fan club route...assuming the technology doesn't baffle their minds.

NIN Double Redux

Thank God for Wired...they explain everything. I am now even more impressed that the band was doing all of those things with the screen live (thanks to some really awesome technology). Check out the video in the post to see clips of what I was trying to describe.

Nine Inch Nails Redux

Bruce Lefsetz saw Nine Inch Nails in Los Angeles. He wrote about it. He expressed himself better than I did, but then again he's the "First in Musical Analysis" and I'm just some dude. He also didn't spend as much time trying to describe the visuals, which probably helped. In any case, there's one section in particular that really struck me:

You’d think something as inside, as powerful and almost violent as Nine Inch Nails, would be a guy thing. But the ratio was at least 50/50. You should have seen the women WRITHING! As if possessed by a spirit. Each and every one was in a trance. Popping and locking, swiveling almost involuntarily.

I kept needing to get closer. There were no video screens. No giant images of the band so those in the upper deck could get a glimpse of the singer’s face.

But, suddenly, they did lower a hi-def screen. And the band installed itself in front of it. And as it played, stripped down, flame-like bubbles encased them on the screen. You almost weren’t sure whether they were BEHIND the screen. The images MERGED!

I needed to get closer.

That's pretty much how I felt: when everything really clicked, it was like I was possessed by a spirit. I was jumping up and down, yelling at the top of my voice, teetering on the edge of breaking through the social constraint that keeps me from jumping on random people who aren't interested in mosh pits, that keeps me from being a huge jackass. That's what Nine Inch Nails did; why that show ranks so high on my all-time list: they broke down my social controls, let me revert, for a few minutes, to an animalistic state. And then they blew my mind with pretty lights.

Nine Inch Nails - The IZOD Center

I was going to preface this review with a story about buying bootlegs of Nine Inch Nails concerts on tape in the late 90s, but that kind of fluff isn't necessary: there's so much to talk about as it is that the bootleg story can wait until another time.

This concert was one of the best three concerts I've seen in my life (the other two: Tool at the Verizon Wireless Arena in 2002 and Metallica at Gillette Stadium in 2003), drawing on a common theme of a complete audio/visual experience. As it turns out, play a rockin' show is good...blowing my mind with a great light show is even better. Let me explain what I mean:

First there were the rows and rows of lights arranged in a grid behind the band. Some were strobes; most were stage lights set on swivels. For the first half hour, the stage lights operated in sequence with the music, creating Matrix-style patterns during "March of the Pigs," flaring green and blue and moving in coordinated waves during "Reptile" while the strobes, well...strobed. Strobbingly. The effect probably varied depending on your location, but from twenty feet in front of the stage it was wonderfully dazzling. I remember coming up from headbanging during "Wish" and stopping, stunned for a moment as the wash of blue and red lights hit me in the face like a sledgehammer. You can see a little bit of what I mean from this photo.

Then there were the screens: three scrims, made out of a mesh of steel bars, that dropped vertically from the top of the lighting rig to fall in front, behind, and above the band. When they were off, it was a bit like watching the band through a chainlink fence...but they weren't off very often. Instead, they broadcast all kinds of fun things:

• A rain-like pattern (I think during "Closer") that surrounded the stage, making it look like the band was playing in the middle of a tsunami.
  
• Black and white static, which when combined a partially transparent front screen and the musicians' black clothing made the band look like they were made out of static. At the end of the song, Trent retreated to the back of the stage, looking like he was disappearing into the static.
• Before "5 Ghosts 1," the front scrim went completely opaque and the band came out front with stands for keyboards and Robin Finck's slide guitar. While they played "5 Ghosts 1" and "17 Ghosts II", the screen displayed three enormous color-changing circles that echoed the tour's "lights in the sky" theme.
  
• An enormous desert scene with clouds flying out into the audience during "19 Ghosts III."
• Five enormous blue ovals, each bisected by a different pattern of current, which floated in the air behind the band (now back inside the confines of the scrim circle) during "Piggy." At the end of the song, the ovals turned into a blue wash that covered the whole set of scrims. A roadie came out at the end of the song and - using either some well-timed choreography or motion-sensing elements in the screen, "wiped" the whole front clean using his flashlight. The rest of the blue wash then exploded into glass shards that flew out towards the audience.
• During "Survivalism: A replication of the security monitors from the song's video, with feeds of Trent, fans at the front of the house and fans at the back of the house taking up three of the screens.
  
• During "Only," first black and white and then RGB static filled the front screen. When Trent sang, a hole opened up in the static; when he moved, it followed him around. As the song built to the climax, the static changed into washes of different opacities, which Reznor was then able to pick up and throw off the screen like balls.
• The blow my mind moment of the night: At the start of "Echoplex," the rear screen displayed a series of white horizontal blocks with a red line running through them (consistent with the artwork from The Slip). Drummer Josh Freese came out and touched the blocks to light them up, building the drum pattern of the song in the process, as if he was controlling an enormous sequencer. He repeated the process at the end of the song to deconstruct the beat.

That was just the light show; the music kicked ass, too. Openers Does It Offend You, Yeah were the opposite of offensive, contributing a little bit of a mind trip of their own by making a sonic transition from Nitzer Ebb to Mudhoney to The Cars (if The Cars were English) in three songs. "Head Like a Hole," "Terrible Lie," and the cuts from Broken were the brutal, moshpit-inspiring buzzsaws that had fueled my adolescent rage. The selections from The Downward Spiral matched that album's desperation to a T. Year Zero's black cynicism (there's nothing quite like a darkly-grinning Trent Reznor leading a chorus of "I'm a part of this great nation" howled by a room full of maniacs), The Slip's punk-edged industrialism, Ghosts' beautiful, brilliant ambience; they were all there, crisply delivered (the sound put the engineers of any other band I've seen in that arena to shame) with only minimal mixing issues. The heavy electric songs, the noise rock, the acoustic set in the middle of the show; it was a perfect balance of the different elements of the catalog, with the right breaks, the right ups, the right downs.

Favorite musical moment of the night: "Piggy" at the end of the acoustic Ghosts set. Surrounded by blue light, rocking a heavy lounge jazz feel, "Piggy" was simultaneously cool and laid back and very, very menacing. You couldn't help but feel, as you listened to Reznor growl out the words, that the person he was singing to had really screwed him over and was going to pay for it in the very near future in a very bad way.

Set List (via Brooklyn Vegan)

1. 999,999
2. 1,000,000
3. letting you
4. discipline
5. march of the pigs
6. head down
7. the frail
8. reptile
9. closer
10. gave up
11. the warning
12. vessel
13. 5 ghosts I
14. 17 ghosts II
15. 19 ghosts III
16. piggy [ghost]
17. the greater good
18. pinion
19. wish
20. terrible lie
21. survivalism
22. the big come down
23. 31 ghosts IV
24. only
25. the hand that feeds
26. head like a hole
    
    [Encore]
    
27. echoplex
28. god given
29. the good soldier
30. hurt
31. in this twilight

NIN In Rehearsal

Playing "1,000,000:" http://www.nin.com/1000000.html

That, my friends, is how a band is supposed to rock. That is rock music at the level of vitality that just fills you with energy. I want to go out and start a band right now.

Mocking Boring Thrash

In addition to writing (independently now - woo!) concert reviews, I've picked up some work writing album descriptions. They're a bit like reviews, except I can't write anything negative (or anything too negative) because they're written for a retailer, which is in the business of selling CDs, not informing the public about their musical value. It's an interesting creative challenge, because it can mean finding the good in things that are, well, mediocre. Fortunately, thanks to MySpace, I can filter out the real trash before it comes to me, so to this point, if I'm writing to recommend something it's because I actually like it - which is why I bother linking to the reviews from my clips page.

Of course, there are always the ones I was happy to let get away, or the pieces I wrote that omitted my sharper criticisms for the sake of the client's request - but there's no rule that says I can't talk about those albums here. In other words: new feature, where I bash crappy metal albums, or cover the other side of my reviews. Let's begin.

Flash back to a couple of weeks ago. I'm perusing the weekly list my editor sends me with the week's additions. All of these albums either are or were on the Billboard 200 in the past year, and because I'm a Clear Channel-hating luddite who has way too much nostalgia for rock radio from the mid-1990s, I've generally never heard of three-quarters of the artists on the list because they're (presumably) on the airways and I'm not listening. In any case, unless I get lucky and something like ObZen or Ghosts I-IV gets on the list, I'm going to need to do some research through Google, Wikipedia, and MySpace.

This particular week's pull is pretty grim. There's Down's third album, which I really want to like because I like both Pantera-era Phil Anselmo (despite his being a huge douchebag) and Corrosion of Conformity such as they were when "Albatross" was a single, but I can't because it's legitimately terrible. There's Atreyu's latest release, but I liked them better when they were called Van Halen. And then there's a group called Black Tide.

Wikipedia tells me that Black Tide has an average age of very young (well under 20) and that they have a throwback late 80s thrash sound. Equally much seems to be made of their youth and their sound, which should set off alarm bells: I liked Silverchair when I was 14, but not too long afterwards I released how terrible that first album was and how part of the hype was that it was a rock album recorded by sixteen-year-olds. Anyway, I'm intrigued, so I find their MySpace page and take a listen. Very quickly, I am appalled. Even worse, I grow bored.

There's no doubt that Black Tide is a very talented group of musicians, with a pair of shredders who can play much better than I ever could. They even have a cool name for their lead single (if that's how you can describe a MySpace track): "Warriors of Time." Here's the problem though: take every NWOBHM and thrash cliche you can think of - twin guitar harmonies, fast paced palm mute riffs with thin, crunchy distortion, backing vocals that can easily be chanted by a large crowd - slap a nice production veneer on it, and you've got Black Tide. Their music is a faithful, boring reproduction of metal from twenty years ago, without any new touches or twists (besides the better recording quality) that would help them stand out from a crowd. I hate boring music. I will not review boring music. I will make fun of it instead. So, Black Tide: if you can cook up something new and interesting for your next album - even in the thrash vein - I will gladly give it a listen. Until then, you're getting far more attention than you deserve.