The state of the world has finally caught up to Nine Inch Nails. For society, that isn’t good news.
Tuesday at the first of a two-night stand at a rafters-packed United Center, the veteran band performed a tidy 100-minute concert whose themes and music fit with recent developments in technology, culture and policy. Almost entirely through the art of strong suggestion, the connections between Nine Inch Nails’ presentation and many of the foreboding issues dominating the headlines proved too obvious to miss.
Those connections also prevented the quintet from seeming overly reliant on the past, even as it generously drew from the ’90s. A majority of the songs in its set were more than 30 years old. Just three stemmed from the past decade. Still, apart from a flat “The Perfect Drug,” few selections came across as sentimental or recycled. Though no longer cutting edge, favorites such as “Mr. Self Destruct” and “March of the Pigs” landed as instructive, vital, even necessary in today’s changing America.
In town for only their second non-festival appearance since 2009, Nine Inch Nails also benefited from the fact that its leader, Trent Reznor, showed few signs of physical aging. His hair cropped short, his lean body outfitted in all black (‘natch), the 60-year-old singer-guitarist-keyboardist sounded pretty much the same as he did when he helped introduce the mainstream to industrial constructs well before the word “alternative” became coined as a catch-all subgenre and marketing term.
Granted, Reznor backed off the microphone during certain sequences to preserve his voice. Screamed parts ramped down to merely aggressive singing. And he looked almost too relaxed handling a couple of solemn ballads whose fragility cried out for a smaller venue. Yet the debilitating anxiety, the brooding anger, the nagging sorrow, the lingering self-doubt: All there, lodged within his distinctive baritone, and the hisses, shouts, pleas and sighs comprising his deliveries.
In the last half-century, few artists registered a larger impact on what we hear than Reznor. Whether or not you listen to Nine Inch Nails, the Pennsylvania native’s footprint traverses an array of styles. Everything from contemporary dance, electronica and pop to hip hop and metal owes a debt to the material he began releasing with Nine Inch Nails in 1990.
A prolific creative and visionary pioneer, Reznor further boosted his profile with a variety of collaborative, remix and production efforts. His decision to put Nine Inch Nails on hold and go full-bore into soundtrack work in the early 2010s expanded his reach.
Often co-credited with Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails’ only other official member), Reznor’s fingerprints are on upwards of two dozen film and television projects for PBS (“The Vietnam War”), HBO (“Watchmen”), Disney (“Soul of the City”), Apple (“The Gorge”) and commercial cinema (“Challengers”). Notably, the forthcoming “Tron: Ares” record marks the first time since 1996 that the full Nine Inch Nails will receive billing on a movie effort.
The lead single from that album, “As Alive as You Need Me to Be,” stood as the sole new track the band obliged in an evening skewed toward Reznor’s bleakest inventions. It unfolded amid a brief mid-show excursion on a small second stage in the center of the arena. Assisted by opener and DJ-producer Boys Noize, Reznor and Ross supplied club-oriented refreshes of several of Nine Inch Nails’ electronic-dominant cuts. Not that the refreshes lessened the predatory ugliness of “Closer” or the caustic ooze of “Vessel.”
In keeping with their theatrical reputation, Nine Inch Nails also began the concert on the auxiliary platform. Seated at a keyboard, Reznor opted for minimalism on the hushed “A Minute to Breathe” before, one by one, three of his other mates joined. Drummer Josh Freese was the last instrumentalist revealed, his presence initially depicted via video on sheer canvas covering the front and sides of the main stage.
The see-through draping remained in place for six songs, its effect both underlining the black-and-white color schemes and generating chiaroscuro on the level of a classic noir film. To provide close-up views, a cameraman scurried around the stage and zoomed in on individual musicians. The immediate results appeared on a pair of side screens and, intermittently, in exaggerated or altered form along with various organic visuals on the curtains. During the glitchy twitch of “Copy of A,” the flesh-and-blood Reznor got surrounded by a sea of duplicate Reznors that emerged by way of time-delay projections on the draping.
For all the sophisticated illumination and abundant strobe lighting, the band preferred shadows and darkness. All the better for tense compositions that confronted decay and disease, pain and nihilism, and dread and destruction with all the subtlety of a circular saw biting into a wrought-iron fence. Nothing unusual for Nine Inch Nails. What felt different was how formerly personal (and occasionally self-indulgent) matters telescoped into broader concerns. How the inextricable combinations of lyrical narratives and distortion-addled arrangements served as salient commentaries on authoritarian power and artificial intelligence, as well as science denialism, knee-bending capitulation and unrestrained wealth.
Nine Inch Nails’ most overt political statement arrived second-hand, in the guise of a churning cover of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans.” Reznor limited banter to quick thank-yous and band introductions but he held true to the tour’s name: “Peel It Back.”
Bobbing on the balls of his feet as he leaned toward the crowd, Reznor sang of a nightmarish dystopia in which lies, viruses, violence and deception ran amok. The chopped-and-screwed update of “Piggy,” the skin-shedding textured loops of “Reptile,” the claustrophobic pressure of “Gave Up.” All communicated festering sickness and reckless violence, and Nine Inch Nails made it clear that no vaccine was available. Ditto hope, authenticity or faith.
“We can’t believe in anything,” Reznor lamented during a tender “A Minute to Breathe.” “Wish there was something real,” he bellowed on the stinging “Wish.” “God is dead, and no one cares,” he seethed on a pounding “Heresy.” “Give me something to believe in,” the singer begged on the dance-ready “As Alive as You Need Me to Be.”
Yes, the ensemble could’ve used more of the manic intensity and blistering attack that came so easily in its early days. And a deeper survey of songs from mid- and later-period LPs would have tamped down the whiff of nostalgia. But even as a well-rehearsed composure supplanted the anything-can-happen chaos of old, the maturation suited a band that seemingly understands the moment and what compliance gets. No wonder some of the evening’s most potent songs — “Zero Sum,” “Less Than,” “The Hand That Feeds,” “Ruiner,” “Head Like a Hole” — explicitly held the docile attitudes and misplaced priorities of the greater community accountable for our present situation.
“Bow down before the one you serve,” Reznor declared, no longer as a stern command but as a resigned truth that warrants constant repeating. “You’re going to get what you deserve.”
Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.
Setlist from the United Center on Aug. 19, 2025.
“A Minute to Breathe” into “Zero Sum”
“Ruiner”
“Piggy”
“Wish”
“March of the Pigs”
“Reptile”
“Heresy”
“Copy of A”
“Gave Up”
“Vessel”
“Closer”
“As Alive as You Need Me to Be”
“Came Back Haunted”
“Mr. Self Destruct”
“Less Than”
“The Perfect Drug”
“I’m Afraid of Americans” (David Bowie cover)
“The Hand That Feeds”
“Head Like a Hole”
“Hurt”
