Vol. 3, No. 3, March 2006
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House of Nails
Nine Inch Nails performs 8 p.m. March 11 at the House of Blues. Tickets are $39.50, $50 and $55.
The coolest show of the month, hands down, belongs to the House of Blues, which somehow managed to land Nine Inch Nails—a band which commonly sells out arenas—to play in their intimate venue on March 11.
Perhaps the most popular industrial group ever, NIN is actually one person: singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Trent Reznor, who brought the genre to a mass audience by mixing industrial beats with hard-edged pop melodies including lyrics that made NIN an alt-rock mainstay.
The 30-year-old Reznor, a Pennsylvania native, grew up with music always on his mind, ranging from KISS to classical. When he sent demo tapes to approximately a dozen labels in the late '80s, nearly every one offered him a record deal. He received notice with his very first single, "Down In It," followed by the more mainstream rock-oriented "Head Like a Hole." Gigs, including a big one on the first Lollapalooza, helped propel Reznor's success, but some contract issues sidelined him until Interscope gave him his own label, Nothing.
His label's first EP, Broken, was certainly extreme industrial music, but it produced the Top 10 single "Wish," which earned Reznor his first Grammy for Best Heavy Metal Performance.
NIN really came to the public attention with The Downward Spiral, a concept album that spawned the smashes "Closer" and "Hurt." Reznor showed his propensity for all things weird by producing the soundtrack for David Lynch's Lost Highway, contributing one of his best songs, "The Perfect Drug."
A five-year battle with writer's block followed, but Reznor was finally cured when he released the double-CD The Fragile in 1999, a remix album in 2000, a live album in 2002 and last year's With Teeth, which the band is currently touring in support of, featuring the singles "The Hand That Feeds" and "Only."
