Twelve years ago, I saw Nine Inch Nails for the first time when their Tension tour came to Minnesota. I wound up seated next to a guy who worked in the touring concert industry, and before the set he told my brother and me that the lighting design we were about to see would set the standard for stadium shows for years to come. The big hook of the show was a lighting rig that projected in the front, back, and middle of the stage, creating the appearance that the band was playing inside a cube of lasers. It was a pretty spectacular effect and used in a wide variety of ways over the course of that show. 

Twelve years later, NIN returned to St. Paul for the first time since that tour with the Peel It Back tour. Trent Reznor and company had set a pretty high bar, and I would have been pretty happy if they had just repeated the setup of the Tension tour. But Trent had a much more elaborate plan in mind. 

While the Tension tour's lighting setup would return partway through the show, the Peel It Back tour had its own deceptively simple central gimmick: two stages. Within a minute of opener Boys Noize finishing up his DJ set, a curtain dropped around a small square stage in the middle of the stadium floor, revealing Trent sitting alone at a piano. He opened with a quiet, contemplative version of "Right Where It Belongs," which cast a spell over the sold-out audience. A couple members of the band joined him in the center for "Ruiner" and "Piggy" before the the band took a short walk to the main stage. There, the full band ripped through some greatest hits like "Wish," "March of the Pigs," "Reptile," and one of my more recent NIN favorites, "Copy of A." It was during this section of the show the Tension lighting rig returned, bathing the band in a variety of three-dimensional effects. 

After the six-song set on the main stage, Trent returned to the small stage with Atticus Ross and Boys Noize for a four-song set of more electronic songs, including a remixed version of The Downward Spiral standout "Closer" and the new single "As Alive as You Need Me to Be." During this section, the main stage was transformed into a giant three-sided movie screen, with the action from the small stage projected onto the giant curtains. It was an effect that made you feel like you were watching a concert movie as it was happening. 

The night closed off with another set on the main stage, this one more stripped down - just the band and some more standard lighting. Not that the final set of songs needed any dressing up - it included "The Perfect Drug," "The Hand That Feeds," a cover of the Reznor-produced David Bowie song "I'm Afraid of Americans," and the one-two closing punch of "Head Like a Hole" and "Hurt." Both songs had the entire crowd singing along, and while "Hurt" had chills running down my spine, there's something particularly impactful about hearing 15,000+ people singing "I'd rather die than give you control" in the political climate we're currently living in. "I'm Afraid of Americans" and "March of the Pigs" felt like especially loaded song choices for the same reasons.

Based on what I've seen online, NIN are playing a core group of songs at every stop on this tour, but also rotating other songs so every show is a little different. Between the track rotation, the structure of the show, and the intensity put into the live performance, it's clear that Trent Reznor and company are committed to putting on a world-class live experience every night. Let's hope it's not another 12 years before they come back to town.