A tour souvenir from Nine Inch Nails
Ben Wener
The Orange County Register
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Ominous, that's for sure. Does such a rueful statement mean Trent Reznor, the king of pain who is Nine Inch Nails, somehow deems his work on this miserable planet a failure? Not in terms of musical accomplishment (he knows he's got that to spare) but in terms of social achievement?
Anymore it seems that the generation he so desperately wanted to make hurt merely wallowed in his rage temporarily - then we grew up, got over ourselves and left him to peddle to a new set of gloomy teen-agers.
That's probably too harsh. First, large-scale anguish - and NIN's may be the most massive ever - is as timeless as silly love songs, and I imagine when I'm 65 I'll still require seasonal doses of "Head Like a Hole" and "Terrible Lie," especially when the government acts up.
Secondly, it's clear Trent is (s-l-o-w-l-y, as always) veering toward reinvention. You can hear him yearning to present his maturity all over "The Fragile," his flawed masterpiece from `99. But like any good chameleon, he has learned how to play-act. He knows how to regurgitate the intensity and insecurity of his youth - not to mention his brute-force specialty, hormonally electrified animalism - without letting on where his head is really at these days.
It's a trick of the masters and always good for the bottom line.
So I prefer to read the title of his new live bonanza - CD, limited-edition CD with bonus disc, VHS (who needs it?) and, the best experience, DVD - as portentous meaning pretentious. Just the sort of vague, end-of-days remark that incites sorrow without really signifying anything.
For, unfortunately, "And All That Could Have Been" amounts to little more than a tour souvenir. A good one at that - I caught the Anaheim stop and came away less than impressed, but seeing it again close up, I realize there's no point trying to experience NIN from a distance. That brings too much objectivity; you notice how mannered the destructiveness can be, how predictable Reznor's explosions.
Watching with the volume cranked and the herky-jerky, rapid-edit camera work virtually splashing sweat into your lap, you overlook that. You get caught up in the hurricane that builds through "Sin" and "March of the Pigs," until "Gave Up" hails locusts upon your senses. Same goes for the show's last third, which starts churning evil around the deliciously sinister "Closer," then threatens to burn out your tube during "Star(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)ers, Inc."
And yet I've come away disappointed with this highly anticipated package. The middle section, for instance, composed of Eno-esque passages and hypnotic visuals that should be a marvel to stare at, is a letdown, primarily because much of it is shot from the far reaches of the arena. My guess is that Trent wanted fans to take in the entirety of the performance, but even on a large screen everything remains miles away.
That's quibbling. Picking on the skimpiness, however, is not. There seems little reason for this average-length concert to be split into two discs, particularly when the extras are so minimal - a useless still gallery, a 10-minute commentary track about the backdrops used for "La Mer" and "The Mark Has Been Made." (It's said there are also hidden features, including footage of Trent's famous make-nice with Marilyn Manson on "Beautiful People." But I'm not inclined to spend hours looking for the eggs I need to crack to see that.)
What's more, there's an unusual detachment from the audience, which is heard in muted white-noise and seen only as a roiling mass of black-clad flesh. The gig I attended reminded me there's a trade-off between Trent's cries and whispers and his minions' adoration of them. Here, those fans are reduced to dots on canvas, and a sizeable amount of energy goes missing.
Perhaps my expectations were too high. As I witnessed the lonely image of the battered anti-messiah - aglow with an aura of brightness amid a darkened stage, singing how "as I descend from grace, I will take my place in the Great Below" - I lamented the final gasp of `90s self-hatred and society-loathing, the corpse of animosity waiting to be reborn in some new guise. (It always is.)
But someone else - someone just beginning to realize that life ain't always grand, that good people lie and that trust in your fellow humans is something earned, not given - could see it as a revelation. As well it would be.
It's all about timing. And my time for this sort of agony has passed. So has Trent's, I bet.
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(c) 2002, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).
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