Nine Inch Nails – 8.20.2008 – St. Louis, MO

Jess and I attended a long anticipated Nine Inch Nails concert in STL. Jess has never been to a concert of this size so I was kind of excited for her to experience it.

I have to say I have seen NIN in 2000 (Fragility Tour), and 2005 (With Teeth Tour). This one was the best one yet. I have seen a lot of bands live, and I don’t know if it is because of my bias, but NIN has always looked/felt/sounded the best. Maybe it is because Trent Reznor is the artist I most respect in the music industry today. Not only for his art, but for his morality, pursuit for perfection, and unwillingness to compromise his values and vision. I feel him and myself share the same thoughts of that this world is really wrong sometimes, and we really don’t see eye to eye with the way things are, just because someone says that’s how it has to be. I have never really been a person to just accept the way things are if they are wrong. Never been that complacent.

Anyhow, veering off the subject a bit. The show rocked. The opening of the ambient 999,999 and then slamming you right into the song 1,000,000 got you a rude awakening of what was to come. The band was very powerful, and very clean. Throughout the set list the intensity and power never really stopped. I cant imagine that much intensity for that long because as a fan and a spectator, I was exhausted just from the applause and rocking out with them.

The set list went on as follows:

8.20.2008 STL Set List

Before the encore Trent talked to the audience saying “he’d had one of those days when it seemed everyone was against him every second of the day, and his time on stage tonight were the best two hours of his day.”

St. Louis then got a full 6 song encore, overall we got 33 songs, 2 more songs than any other venue received in the tour thus far.

Just when we though we couldn’t have any more, the next day at home I checked and NIN had announced they will be coming to our own Columbia, MO on 11.21.2008. You know who will be there!

A few pictures: