The journey hasn’t been linear, which makes Nine Inch Nails’ Peel It Back Tour all the more fascinating. Announced in January 2025, the world tour dates began on June 15 in Dublin, marking their first outing since 2022, post-pandemic and a cathartic and celebratory return to live music.
Back at home, Nine Inch Nails’ first performance in DFW was in 1990, opening for The Jesus & Mary Chain at the Arcadia Theatre. This ornate cinema-turned venue was originally built in the 1920s and destroyed by its third fire in 2006. During the '80s and '90s, it was a popular venue for seeing metal bands like Slayer or Pantera. The intimate venue had a capacity of around 1,000, and that was just about as intimate as a Nine Inch Nails show could get.
Cut to 1994, and NIN headlines the larger Bomb Factory two months after the release of The Downward Spiral. The record’s popularity would lead to the band playing the Fair Park Coliseum later in the year, and arenas became the norm. The influence of that era hasn’t been forgotten. To this day, The Downward Spiral is considered one of the seminal albums of the '90s, with artists from Linkin Park to Lady Gaga praising the album’s diverse sounds and groundbreaking production.
Locally, industrial and goth nights prevail on Fridays at Sons of Hermann Hall’s Panoptikon events and The Church at It’ll Do Club. There’s the clashing production of Pinkish Black and the ethereal yet dark ambiance of Lorelei K.
Between the early '90s and now, there were more than a few projects with Reznor attached other than the band’s releases: an appearance in the music video and a remix for David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans,” the soundtrack for the video game Quake, the Social Network score and subsequent Academy Award and production for Halsey’s album If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power.
Since 2016, Atticus Ross has been an official member of Nine Inch Nails and has been a close collaborator alongside Reznor for more than 20 film and television scores. On Sept. 19, the Tron: Ares soundtrack will be the duo’s first film score under the band moniker.
“It sounds precise and unpleasant at times. It’s not an atonal, punishing score, but we spent a lot of time thinking about the undertones of what’s happening in the story,” Reznor explained in an interview with Empire earlier this summer.
The soundtrack’s first single, “As Alive as You Need Me to Be,” is still signature Nine Inch Nails with its droning industrial rock and pummeling synths. Don’t expect a Disney film score to drain the essence out of NIN.
Other than performing a song from a film soundtrack, there’s another element to this tour that stands out: it’s the first lineup change for the band in nine years.
Earlier this year, drummer Josh Freese was fired from the Foo Fighters after two years with the band, and Nine Inch Nails’ Ilan Rubin subsequently joined the Foo Fighters in July. In an odd twist of fate, Freese was then announced as the new drummer for Nine Inch Nails, a band he had played with during the Year Zero and The Slip album cycles. There are some special moments for Freese to shine during this tour, but we won’t spoil the fun.
The band’s last concert in Dallas-Fort Worth was at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in 2018, with The Jesus & Mary Chain opening for them all of those years later. The intensity was still palpable, just with the added bonus of concertgoers consisting of more generations than ever before.
In that review, we wrote:
Nine Inch Nails went through a career-spanning set filled with classics such as “Head Like a Hole” and “Gave Up,” as well as newer tracks such as “Copy Of A” and “All the Love in the World.” Reznor displayed an impressive versatility with various instruments, playing guitar on many cuts, a tambourine on “Less Than” and even a saxophone on “God Break Down the Door.”
It’s impressive to see the band with such a defining yet unique presence still filling out arenas more than 30 years after forming. Some things will never change, like the punishing strobe lights and black attire, but the two-stage setup will allow more fans to be up close with one of music’s most versatile artists.
