But on Saturday night, it was Trent Reznor, who sprinted through the edges of the crowd, completely intense, completely self-serious, to the center B-stage at Dickies Arena just before the final sounds of Boys Noize’s opening DJ set, to kick off the first Nine Inch Nails show in North Texas in seven years.
Making for a great juxtaposition, Reznor opened the show quietly, by himself behind a piano, performing a stripped-down version of “Right Where It Belongs” from 2005’s With Teeth. After, Reznor’s now full-time collaborator Atticus Ross joined with bassist Alessandro Cortini for two more tracks, “Ruiner” and “Piggy,” the latter of which featured a huge spotlight casting a 100-foot shadow of Reznor onto the ceiling, like hoisting the flag to the 60-year-old icon’s kingdom, where his audio-visual opus was about to take place.
As “Piggy” closed, a massive projection of drummer Josh Freese, who just rejoined the band for the first time since 2008, appeared on a transparent sheet covering the entire main stage. Reznor, Ross and Cortini sprinted through the crowd again to join Freese and guitarist Robin Finck, kicking off the next two hours of one of the great musical and visual artists of our time.
Each night of NIN’s Peel It Back Tour has been a visual masterpiece. The main front stage is surrounded by a transparent sheet, which projects visuals and live camerawork of the band onto it. With one sheet in front of the band, another in the middle dividing them and a third behind them, it was as if they were inside their own visuals. It’s hard to explain, and it seems impossible that in 2025 we’re still amazed by a technological innovation, but the band proved us wrong.
“Wish,” the first song performed as a full band, was worth the price of admission alone. Later, “Copy Of A” projected about a dozen screens of Reznor’s silhouette all around him, each live feed with a slight delay from the other. We kind of sound like we’re trying to convert you to a cult here, but there’s no other way to describe how shocking it was to see these visuals live. Credit to artist Marcin Pospiech, the designer who crafted the visual show here, and cinematographer Ian Hurdle, who whipped the camera around the stage all night. It sounds crazy, but these two genuinely contributed just about as much to the show as anyone else on stage, and we’d go to another show they produce purely on name alone.
Of course, the aesthetics would be different, but we wonder why every artist with as many resources as Reznor (especially the ones who have even more) doesn’t have as spectacular a live production as they do. Is it a lack of effort? A testament to Reznor’s exhaustive creativity? A mix of both?
Reznor and Ross relocated back to the middle stage, where they were joined by German producer and DJ Boys Noize. On “Vessel,” Reznor operated his own vocal modulators in real time, not unlike seeing the breadth of LCD Soundsystem’s entirely live electronic product.
It was followed up with “Closer,” the band’s biggest commercial hit. Then, the band’s latest, “As Alive As You Need Me To Be,” is a single released from the upcoming Reznor-soundtracked Tron: Ares movie. Judging based on the crowd’s reaction, sing-along and our own repeat listens, it’s arguably entered the band’s canon already, despite only being released in July.
The final sprint back to the main stage coincided with a sprint through six more rockers by NIN, including “Mr. Self Destruct” and “Less Than.” Reznor also addressed the crowd for the first time to pay tribute to both David Lynch and David Bowie, before performing his 1995 collaboration with Bowie, "I’m Afraid of Americans."
They closed with “Head Like a Hole,” arguably their signature song, before returning to the stage for a heavily cinematic performance of “Hurt.”
It’s a feat to behold that Reznor, now 60, remains firmly positioned in the pop culture zeitgeist, thanks to his prolific work as a film composer and the cross-generation appeal of Nine Inch Nails from Gen X parents to their Gen Z children, who each found the band in their own way.
Experiencing his art in person is genuinely exhilarating. It’s thrilling to experience art where one artist has exerted near-total creative control over all that’s happening. There are two ends of the spectrum to this, one side being Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, where the lack of pushback becomes painfully clear, if not still compelling in its own way. As for the other side, think of any of the classic '70s Stevie Wonder albums, where he wrote, recorded and played basically every instrument on every song to make for a decade of perfect music.
Reznor’s product is a rare example of one artist’s vision managing to be so fully realized and also so tightly presented, it’s as if you’ve stepped inside the mind of a genius and you get to see him operate in real time. We can’t say enough about him, or about the entirety of the Peel It Back Tour, other than to make sure not to miss his next show.
