WHAT: Nine Inch Nails: Wave Goodbye 1989-2009 World Tour
VENUE: Fort Canning Park
ATTENDANCE: 5,000
WHEN: Monday, August 10th 2009

NIN's raging and relentless songs hold crowd captive

AMERICAN industrial-rock band Nine Inch Nails’ (NIN) frontman, Trent Reznor, showed at his first Singapore outing that he is a pretty hate machine.

Here on a last run of tours before the 21-year-old band goes on an indefinite hiatus, a buff, chiseled Reznor gave NIN fans here exactly what they wanted – an intense, banging time.

The once-skinny Reznor – who is famed for writing exquisitely angst-filled songs often containing lyrics you wouldn’t want your kids to recite – appeared onstage at 8.35pm to deafening screams from the crowd.

The 44-year-old proceeded to hold the audience captive – with a 100-minute set of raging numbers from NIN’s prolific discography.

Kicking off with the vengeful Somewhat Damaged, from the 1999 album The Fragile, he held court, his trademark growl reverberating throughout the venue.

He sang with his veins straining against the skin of his neck and sweat pouring from every pore, a master of chaos to the 5,000-strong crowd that head-banged to the beat, hanging on to his every lyric.

The band – including guitarist Robin Finck, bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen and drummer Ilan Rubin, whose relentless pounding provided an ideal backbone for the group’s tough sound – slashed their way through the songs, a perfect accompaniment to Reznor’s controlled rage.

The frontman also gave fans a rare chance to get close to him at one point during drum-heavy track Piggy (off 1994’s The Downward Spiral), climbing into the crowd and offering his microphone to the masses so they could sing along to the refrain of “no1pxg can stop me now”.

And, as the show came to a close with gut-wrenching ballad Hurt, the sea of faces came together as one in an electrifyingly haunting singalong.

Reznor’s voice and the crowd’s were one on the chorus as they sang: “What have I become/My sweetest friend/Everyone I know/Goes away in the end.”