Nine Inch Nails @ The o2 Arena (2025)

19 Jun, 2025

18/06/2025
Tour: Peel It Back Tour

Boys Noize

DJ set, more electro house/techno-y kinda stuff if I recall correctly. I honestly anticipated worse, that I feel like a non-DJ set from a house/techno producer would've been, like with whoever the hell was opening for The Prodigy when I saw them live years ago. Eh, it was fine.

Nine Inch Nails

Okay, so I was about to come here and say that I tried and failed to get tickets for Nine Inch Nails live twice before this, in 2018 and 2022, but as it turns out, it was more like 3 times, because I completely forgot that 2 days after the Meltdown festival thing (which I thankfully at least got to see My Bloody Valentine at), they were also gonna be playing at the Royal Albert Hall. All of those times, those shows were "sold out" either just before or just as the tickets were seemingly going on sale.

I figured that I was at least going to be grateful that I got to see them at all here, despite initial minor concerns that members of the band might lose vigor with age and thus not be able to put on an ideal performance, but actually, this kinda ended up being the best show I could've gotten from them of all the times I've attempted to get to see them before... Well, who am I to know that for sure really, but suffice to say it was pretty fucking great!

Aside from the main stage, there were 2 other mini-stages set up in the middle. Towards the back was the smallest stage where Boys Noize was doing his set, and in the middle was what I've put in the setlist section as the "B-Stage" (derived from setlist(dot)fm). There were no breaks between the opener's DJ set and NIN moving from B-Stage to main stage and vice versa. The B-Stage had smaller arrangements like Trent (on piano + vocals), Atticus Ross, and later on Alessandro Cortini and Robin Finck during the first set, and on the second B-Stage set, just Trent (vocals + vocoder), Atticus and Boys Noize.

The visuals and lighting were easily the parts of this show that most excited me! From the transition into the first main stage set, starting with Ilan Rubin drumming the end of the Piggy remix, there was a camera guy on stage with them most of the time where the live footage was also being projected onto and behind the band. I recall the visual/lighting effects during 'Reptile' and 'Copy of A' being especially cool! There were technical problems here and there that were mainly just Trent's mic going out in places, no impact on the visuals and lighting and stuff, and it was hardly a problem for me at all with enjoying the show. Everyone was on their A-game here, but damn, I actually really like Robin Finck's vocals in particular, and Ilan Rubin's drum performance could've very easily stole the show here.

It's hard to go too wrong with the setlist as it is, song choices and all. I'll go into my usual dream setlist bullshit later, I only have a few things to talk about here. The second B-Stage set with Boys Noize was interesting to say the least, and certainly not bad. Music listeners whose sole personality is being miserable and cynical may cry foul at Nine Inch Nails remixing their own songs live with an Electro House DJ/producer, and yeah it's not exactly where my own tastes lie regarding EDM and all, but it was still pretty cool! I gotta say, at the very least, that I liked their remix of 'Only' much more than the studio version, it being one of the very few Nine Inch Nails songs that actively makes me cringe throughout. 'The Warning' was a cool surprise in particular. I'm honestly kinda glad that they only went with one song from Pretty Hate Machine here, because these days, for reasons I'd much rather keep private and have nothing to do with (the content or quality of) the music itself, it's not an album I'm comfortable with. The pavlovian response I got just from that one song being played was a little too much for me to stomach.

It's also because of that, as much as I'd want to put 'Something I Can Never Have' on a NIN dream setlist, that there won't be any Pretty Hate Machine stuff on there... Speaking of which, I'll start out by trying to come up with a more regular headline sorta dream setlist...

Had to omit 'Capital G' and 'Burning Bright (Field on Fire)' because I don't know how to put them in the setlist without it interrupting the flow... Even so, it was hard to come up with anything that I think would actually flow all that well.

As for a dream setlist more in this sorta format, with (insert cool techno/IDM artist here, consisting of either 1 or 2 performers), it wouldn't be dissimilar from this at all, although if I could fit in 'The Becoming' and a couple of Bad Witch tracks there, that'd be ideal for me, that and the B-Stage set with the techno/IDM act assisting in remixing the songs would look more like this for instance:

'All The Love in the World' with an IDM producer would also be very cool, though it wouldn't quite fit the vibe there. Regardless, I know NIN are already very much capable of tending to my tastes in techno or IDM if they wanted to, given tracks like 'Vessel', 'The Great Destroyer' and whatnot, but doing that sorta thing, remixing their own songs with a guest DJ/producer live on that sorta mini-stage, is a very cool idea anyway.

8.5/10

#nin #seen live