Nine Inch Nails: Trent Reznor's brutal charm enchants Milan
On the Milan stage, the most visceral rock and visionary electronics merged with sophisticated cinematic atmospheres
3' min read
3' min read
The only Italian date for the Peel It Back Tour: a bold setlist, essential lighting and a thrilling finale with Hurt. Trent Reznor confirms himself as a total artist, able to switch from Hollywood to guitar without losing depth
Trent Reznor and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: there is a thin thread linking the Salzburg composer and the founder of Nine Inch Nails, a cult name for fans of that 'industrial' rock that exploded in the 1990s. Both found themselves in front of a piano when they were five years old and for both of them, extraordinary enfant prodigies, those keys were a revelation: their music had the power to enchant and conquer.
Peel it back tour
That profound awareness of the unique power of notes can still be found, intact, in the artist born in 1965 in New Castle (Pennsylvania) and it was demonstrated last night at the Parco della Musica in Milan, the only Italian date of his Peel it back tour. Waiting for him was a court formed (in part) by long-standing fans, heads whitewashed but hearts still loyal to distorted guitars. And Trent Reznor, at just turned 60, showed that he has not lost an ounce of his ability to get into the hearts and heads of his listeners.
On the Milan stage, Reznor (together with the brilliant composer and producer Atticus Ross, the Italian Alessandro Cortini, Robin Finck and Ilan Rubin) offered a dense, brutal and lyrical journey, where the most visceral rock and visionary electronics merged with sophisticated cinematic atmospheres. Unexpected and disorienting tracks like the surreal and hypnotic Piggy, absent from live performances for many years, returned, alongside surprises like The Perfect Drug, a rock masterpiece made for David Lynch's Lost Highway. Nine Inch Nails' performance was a tough one, with no frills or big show sets: just mesmerising lighting effects and two screens broadcasting images from the stage, in black and white. Reznor - of few words throughout the evening - broke the silence only to pay a brief tribute to his friend David Bowie, before launching I'm Afraid of Americans, in a thumping version that thrilled the audience.
Bowie and Lynch were not the only ones who sensed and then consecrated Reznor's genius: director David Fincher had wanted him for the Oscar-winning soundtrack of The Social Network (2010) (the second Oscar in 2021, for the animated film Soul). Johnny Cash had done an unforgettable cover of Hurt, a tribute to one of the most intense and heartbreaking songs of Reznor's entire career. A career that, re-reading it now, appears more complex than ever and allergic to genre definitions and limits: after founding Nine Inch Nails in 1988, Reznor partly defined a genre (industrial rock) with albums like Pretty hate machine, The Downward Spiral and The Fragile. Then he came to Hollywood, flirted with it in his own way, and the Oscars and Golden Globes arrived. Among his most recent successes is the soundtrack to Challengers by director Luca Guadagnino, co-written (like many others) with Atticus Ross himself.
