Nine Inch Nails hammers Houston at career-spanning Toyota Center concert

Nearly 40 years down the spiral, Rock And Roll Hall of Fame inductees Nine Inch Nails returned to Houston and the Toyota Center on Friday, September 12. NIN was last in Houston in December 2017, where they played a rainy, abbreviated set at the final Day For Night festival at the future POST Houston complex on a stage festooned with strands of VHS tape and stinging coastal rain. The Bayou City had been due for a catharsis.

Now led by twin film score composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, NIN has grown alongside its audience in time. They’ve created some of the best film scores of the past 20 years, from the devastating Gone Girl to Disney’s ethereal Brian Eno-esque Soul soundtrack, not to mention the Oscar-winning companion music for The Social Network. Children of ‘90s NIN fans have even been indoctrinated via the duo’s unlikely Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem score, some of whom were at Toyota Center on Friday night. The band’s forthcoming TRON: Ares soundtrack releases next week, and it's already shaping up to be some of the duo’s best work in years.

Houston has always been an industrially-minded city, which is likely why NIN’s brand of industrial music has always had a special place in its musical DNA. Even the iconic hip-hop DJ Screw seemed to have a little gothic terror floating in his styrofoam cup and the Tone Zone Records spirit in his releases. Generations of Houstonians still pack Numbers in Montrose on a weekly basis to dance to the acts that influenced Reznor, and his face is even painted on the side of the building. The band’s 1995 club show at the Westheimer landmark is spoken of in reverent tones like a visit from the pope.

International electronic act and kindred spirits Boys Noize opened Friday night’s show, with Alexander Ridha’s harsh electro tenderizing the black-clad masses already clutching NIN merch. He even mixed in NIN’s “Down In It” to make the scene twitch.

NIN called the evening to order right before 9 pm with the industrial ballad “Right Where It Belongs” and Reznor alone at the piano on a squared, elevated stage set in the middle of the arena. Reznor then delicately began “Ruiner,” stripped of its armor left with just his voice and some stark synths as band members joined him, finally.

The grim percussive mania of drummer Josh Freese signaled the band’s change of venue to the main stage as “Wish” segued into the high blood pressure Olympics of “March of the Pigs.” Having Freese in the fold has been the best thing to happen to the band in the past two decades, capturing the inherent funkiness in Reznor’s Prince-influenced catalogue.

With the band bathed in sheer curtains, we got a boot stomping evangelical “Heresy” and the trance of “Copy of A” — where the stage production projected several Reznors in militia garb across the fabric.

We’re now 20 years removed from the muscular juggernaut that was 2005’s return-to-form With Teeth wherein Reznor fused the feral lullabies of 1994’s The Downward Spiral with brash low-end and Bush-era dystopia fully ensconced in Bowie’s Berlin-era. Even though NIN’s discography spans decades, it all exists at once in a live setting, outside of any year or perceived era. He’s managed to craft a singular vision even as the collaborators have changed.

Reznor and Ross returned to the b-stage on the arena floor to convene with Boys Noize for “Vessel” from 2007’s Year Zero. The trio then offered up a funked to death and purple-tinged “Closer” and “Sin,” turning Toyota Center into Numbers for 30 minutes.

The scarily prescient “I’m Afraid Of Americans” came next, followed by a rueful “The Hand That Feeds.”

NIN has always had a forward propulsion. There’s no concept of nostalgia, just raw nerves endlessly being rediscovered by fresh ears.

Cue a blistered and oozing “Head Like A Hole.”

There’s a legacy of elegance, though, in what may seem ugly if you’re not tuned in to the NIN frequency. Reznor was just getting us ready.

Cue a hymnal “Hurt.”

SETLIST

B-Stage

Right Where It Belongs
Ruiner
Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)

Main Stage

Wish
March of the Pigs
Reptile
Heresy
Copy of A
Gave Up

B-Stage (with Boys Noize)

Vessel
Closer
As Alive as You Need Me to Be
Sin

Main Stage

Mr. Self Destruct
Less Than
The Perfect Drug
I’m Afraid Of Americans
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like a Hole
Hurt