When it was announced that Nine Inch Nails were coming to the Accor Arena, there were several reasons to cringe: Trent Reznor and his pals had never performed on such a large stage in Paris, usually preferring more intimate venues (like the Olympia in 2018, which sold out even before tickets went officially on sale). The sound in the huge hall is sometimes capricious, to put it politely. And the tickets were not really cheap... but not unusually expensive for the venue (floor tickets were the same price as at that famous Olympia 7 years ago). That same evening, at La Cigale, Jozef van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch were performing (we'll be telling you more about them soon), and the Paris branch of Verdammnis Incorporated was tearing itself apart... After seeing NIN a dozen times over the last twenty years, could we still be surprised? Can the visceral torments of Reznor that accompanied us in our youth still stir us today, for the umpteenth time? We tell you all about this evening, for which absolutely no photo accreditation was accepted... And so, just this once, we'll use pictures captured by a smartphone (thanks to Caro B. Zmeya for providing us with some of her photos).
Entering the gigantic venue, we discovered the innovation of this tour that was spoiler by previous dates: the presence of a second, smaller stage right in the middle of the pit. At the Olympia or even the Zenith, it would have been complicated. The two stages are hidden by a black curtain. At the back of the pit, Boys Noize launched into a not unpleasant but interminable DJ set. He's adapted his set to suit the mood of the evening, with a few colder, darker passages, but 1h15 without changing the lights, all alone in his corner, is a long time. We can then have fun noting the small details, the T-shirts of a motley audience increasingly salt and pepper (salty, the pepper)... And then there's the security staff, who maintain a small corridor at the edge of the pit. A corridor through which passes a mother and her five little ones, all holding hands, wearing hearing protection and framed by security who take them backstage. It went by too quickly to recognise Mariqueen, but gossip-lovers can speculate: with the Reznors, touring is a family affair. 8.58pm, this time, there's no doubt about it: a shy, discreet smile, quick steps, flanked by security, the boss, our ‘daddy of darkness’, crosses the corridor accompanied by his stage companions.
There was no break between Boys Noize's set and the start of the show: the curtain on the small stage disappeared and the evening's master of ceremonies began alone at the piano with Right Where it Belongs... Which mutates into Somewhat Damaged. On the piano. Which becomes Ruiner. On the piano, Reznor alone, always. You've already seen Nine Inch Nails a bunch of times, but in less than ten minutes the verdict has been delivered: you've never seen them like this. The pit holds its breath as the other musicians gradually take to the stage. The sound gradually thickens. ‘You didn't hurt me, nothing can hurt me, you didn't hurt me, nothing can stop me now’: the lyrics' echoes of which haunt the Accor Arena, announce what's to come as Piggy arrives... but played in its more danceable Nothing Can Stop Me Now version. Reznor gets up from his piano and walks around his little 360-degree stage: wherever you are in Bercy, you're not that far away after all. That's it, that's the intro, this is already the concert of the year, three and a half tracks and nothing but rarities or new versions of older material. Our heart is rushing and everything resonates in us, in our soul or in our head, like a bowl (sorry).
The lights on the small stage go out. The curtain on the main stage lights up and the silhouette of drummer Ilan Rubin, who had been missing until now, takes shape as he starts banging his drums. The audience's attention is diverted as the band crosses the pit once more to take their place on the main stage, performing Wish and March of the Pigs. The crowd gradually comes to life. People know the words..l well, mostly two words, those infamous "fist fuck" during Wish, loudly chanted ! The show was a knockout: Nine Inch Nails played behind a transparent curtain that gave a new dimension to the projections and shadows (and the result was much more controlled and legible than with Tool, for example). Reznor's shadow projected onto the wall at the back of the hall is immense: that's our Trent, glorious, dark, monumental. NIN's tours have become a rarity, but they've pulled out all the stops and the stage set-up fully justifies their choice of such a huge venue, which was initially a little nerve-wracking. The tickets price? Forget the price. In the end, it was even a pittance.
As usual with Nine Inch Nails, the selist is a mix of unmissable classics (Closer with its evolution into The Only Time, the masterful Reptile and its essential menacing heaviness) and semi-surprises. We're delighted, for example, to see Year Zero tracks back in favour, and not necessarily the singles: Vessel and The Warning were perfect for a return to the small stage. Boys Noize also made a comeback, reworking Sin and Came Back Haunted to give them a more techno feel, like an echo of the Piggy remix played earlier. The band alternated between the two stages, with or without curtains. Reznor, sixty years old, is ageing in reverse: his eyes are lively, his rage intact. His muscles from his body-building days have melted away, and his figure is almost youthful. His voice, too - he's always been irreproachable on stage - sounds less deep than it did in the 2000s as his vocal chords seem to have got younger too. Heresy resonates, and you're hanging on for dear life in the pit, but if you were to die now, it wouldn't be so bad.
It's funny how the human brain works. As Reznor presented his line-up, made up entirely of the faithful among the faithful, with the eternal Robin Fick, the accomplice who has become “number two in Nine Inch Nails” Atticus Ross and Alessandro Cortini, our mind played a trick on us. Like déjà vu, Reznor announces that it's Ilan Rubin's birthday. Just like at Le Zénith in 2009, but this time without 50 Cent's In Da Club mixing to Closer or the girls coming to spread a cake on his head. This could give the misleading impression that Ilan Rubin spends his life celebrating his birthday, when in fact, twice in 16 years seems a reasonable average (unless this is the secret of Nine Inch Nails' eternal vigour).
You think you know the ending, unchanging for so many years: it's going to be ‘the H songs’ anyway. In fact, no, not quite: Burn, possessed and cathartic, replaces The Hand That Feeds before we throw our last energy into Head Like A Hole. And then there's Hurt, of course. You have to be predictable sometimes. We're all familiar with Hurt's ritual at the end of the show, we've had enough of it, and the day he'll replace it with Eraser, All That Could Have Been or even The Background World, we'll get a tattoo of his dark look in the place of his choice. But tonight, even Hurt packs a punch. The lighting was amazing, cutting into the singer's silhouette, the intensity soared, the Accor Arena bellowed in chorus... Is Reznor an exceptional actor or is he reliving the time when, as a young man, he was writing this song?As someone said : in the end, it doesn't even matter, it was both the climax and the twilight of a powerful and immersive concert. The band leave, the curtain falls, the Twin Peaks theme plays, reminding us of David Lynch's recent death, and the Nine Inch Nails logo appears. Thanks for the fun and happy ending, Trent: even if your latest studio work isn't quite as earth-shattering (but still interesting, we can't blame you for not having a teenage crisis at your age), you've still got a knack for ruining the mood.
So, Nine Inch Nails? Three years ago we told you about our doubts following their excellent but unsurprising Hellfest concert, but now Reznor has turned the tables and returned with an ambitious show of unprecedented scope for his project, reinvented songs and a setlist that embraces a career whose variety was reflected in the audience. By taking the weirdness and industrial rage of their influences and bending them to a sense of pop-rock formula, Nine Inch Nails have become something huge, a rock legend in the broadest sense of the word, bringing people together with their timeless hits. But these are neurotic hits that talk about doing ‘things’ to us like animals, hits with broken machines that scream their despair and ooze rage. It's clear from this new show, and also from the new festival dedicated to film music that Reznor and Ross are launching this year: yes, Nine Inch Nails are now assuming their status as big bosses and seem, at this stage of their career, to have found new ambitions and to be continuing to mutate. We came here wondering if this might be one time too many. We came away wanting to see them again and again. What comes next will be fascinating.
