Nine Inch Nails Live At Royal Festival Hall London 22.06.18

“Apparently today we have a new album out,” says Trent Reznor casually, 45 minutes into tonight’s show, to a huge roar of approval. The cheers, one senses, are fuelled not merely by an appreciation of the excellent Bad Witch, nor the fact that Reznor has chosen to give the album its European premiere in London, but by an immense sense of gratitude that, 30 years after forming, Nine Inch Nails are still here at all.

In November 2009, two months on from NIN’s ‘farewell’ show at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre, Reznor began auctioning off his band’s gear on eBay, a pointedly unsentimental denouement to emphasise the finality of his decision to take NIN off the road. “I'd never want to be Gene Simmons, an old man who puts on makeup to entertain kids, like a clown going to work,” Reznor stated at the time. But with Bad Witch - the third and final instalment in a “suite” of albums which began with 2016’s Not the Actual Events and continued with 2017’s Add Violence – being NIN’s most engaged and outward-looking release since 2008’s The Slip, it feels important and necessary for Reznor’s band to be eyeball-to-eyeball with their audience again.

So when the thrillingly in-your-face state-of-the-world address Ahead Of Ourselves finds the singer spitting 'When we could have done anything, we wound up building this' there’s no question that his rage and disgust is very real and very keenly felt. Bad Witch’s stand-out track, the twitching God Break Down The Door, follows: fierce, questioning and obviously indebted to the late David Bowie, it’s a powerful reminder that the passing of time need not reduce performance to pantomime. Not that anyone watching what is one of NIN’s definitive London sets could have nurtured any doubts. In a genuinely remarkable two week period which has seen stages in the capital graced by some of the world’s greatest rock bands – the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Deftones and My Bloody Valentine among them – tonight NIN stand as peerless masters of shock and awe showmanship and spectacle.

Taking place under the banner of this summer’s Meltdown Festival, tastefully curated by The Cure frontman Robert Smith, who’s watching on from a balcony, the evening starts, superbly, with no fewer than four songs from 1999’s The Fragile: Somewhat Damaged, The Day The World Went Away, The Frail and The Wretched. Tickets for this 2,500 seat venue sold out in literally seconds when released in March, and it’s immediately apparent that there’s a genuine feeling among those in attendance that they’re privileged to be here. This means that the dynamic dips and dives of NIN’s metal machine music are respectfully greeted, with a reverential hush descending during the most stripped-back passages.

It makes for a truly wonderful, wholly immersive gig experience, with flawless sound and beautifully choreographed visuals throughout. Picking out highlights seems almost disrespectful, but March Of The Pigs is staggeringly intense, a cover of Bowie’s I’m Afraid Of Americans seems horrifyingly prescient at a time when children are being detained in Trump’s concentration camps, Wish is just savage, and a closing Hurt raises goosebumps and causes eyes to prickle with tears. “We’re grateful that people still care,” says a clearly delighted Reznor in closing, but really it’s the fact that he still cares after almost walking away from all of this that makes Nine Inch Nails such a vital, visceral experience.

WORDS: Paul Brannigan
PHOTOS: Jenn Five

Bad Witch is out now on Caroline. Check it out on the stream below and get a load of our gallery from the show.

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