MUSIC: Nine Inch Nails roar through their last Vegas show with Jane’s Addiction.
Did the Nails pound themselves into their own coffin?
It certainly seemed that way Monday night at The Pearl.
“So this is our last tour,” Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, pictured at right, told the crowd. “I appreciate you sticking around over the years.”
And with that the band launched into the brooding, slow-simmering dirge “The Day The Whole World Went Away,” an end-time anthem that took on a measure of added resonance considering that this could have been the last time NIN ever played Vegas.
If it was, then they went out with an apocalyptic bang. Though it had only been a few months since the band last played Vegas at Planet Hollywood this past December, NIN didn’t repeat themselves, scaling back on the high-tech production values in favor of a bare knuckle assault in front of a blinding wall of lights.
Tearing through seldom aired “The Downward Spiral” cluster bombs like the sacrilegious savagery of “Heresy” and the cathartic “I Do Not Want This,” the group turned in a curveball-strewn set, including a pounding cover of Gary Numan’s “Metal” and a revisiting of Adam and the Ants’ “Physical (You’re So),” which was once a staple at NIN gigs.
With lanky guitarist Robin Finck soloing wildly through every other tune, his Medusa-like dreadlocks whipping through the air, NIN bared down on the crowd like an 18-wheeler turning anything in its path into roadkill.
“Piggy” was transformed from a ruminative, stark and slinky whisper into a drum ’n’ bass blowout; “The Hand That Feeds” was ratcheted up into a death disco temper tantrum.
With a beefy Reznor screaming himself hoarse as his veins bulged from his neck, NIN was a study in barely controlled chaos.
It all culminated with the band’s regular show-closer, the spare, rueful “Hurt.” With the stage barely illuminated, Reznor bid his farewell to the crowd.
“Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear,” he sang, stirring emotions that won’t so easily dissipate.
If the cycle of nature dictates that death gives way to new life, the same holds true when it comes to rock bands.
And so as NIN have begun to wind down as a live act, their tourmates, a reunited Jane’s Addiction, have undergone something of a rebirth.
Touring with bassist Eric Avery for the first time in 18 years, the band was an explosion of willful rock and roll indulgence: guitarist Dave Navarro never seemed to stop soloing frantically throughout the band’s headlining set; shirtless frontman Perry Farrell untethered his oversexed banshee howl and let it soar to the rafters; Avery and drummer Stephen Perkins created the kind of magnificent rumble seldom heard outside of monster tuck rallies.
Opening with an extended take on the already epic “Three Days,” the band embraced excess with sprawling, boulder-heavy jams.
Dense and brawny rockers like “Whores” and a yowling “Pigs In Zen” were more concussive than most of the tunes you hear on the “Headbanger’s Ball” these days, pulsing with a primal, tribal throb.
Back in the day, it was seen as something of a joke when Jane’s Addiction was nominated for a metal Grammy in the category’s debut for their sophomore disc “Nothing’s Shocking.” But see ’em live, and that dubious designation at least makes some sense, as they bring more power and torque than most longhairs can muster.
Of course, Jane’s also has a contemplative side, and they’re prone to many more artistic flights of fancy than most metal acts allow themselves.
Hence, the band occasionally departed from conjuring up hard rock thunderbolts on songs like “Then She Did,” which began as a pretty pop daydream before lunging into something fiercer.
But, for the most part, this night was about reveling in all the seismic vibrations these dudes created.
“I know why you’re here,” Farrell chided at one point. “You can’t help yourselves.”
The same could be said of the band in question.
