The as promised report:

Although I’m definitely paying for it today with how tired I am… last night’s Nine Inch Nails concert was amazing!

I was actually a big fan of the opening band, “A Place to Bury Strangers,” they have a shoegazy, industrial, surf kind of sound. My friend called them “a really heavy Joy Division,” which isn’t too far off. It was cool to hear their rich, thick guitar tones live, but their drummer had so many time problems that their set was almost unbearable. You couldn’t find the beat to save your life because the drummer was all over the place. If they had some solid time, it would’ve been a great set, I was sad that one bad element pulled them down so far.

Nails, however, was as good as ever. Hearing some of the new songs from “Year Zero” and “The Slip” was great, and they always amp them up, adding parts, changing things up, so it doesn’t sound like you’re listening to the CD again. I was especially surprised that they played a few pieces from their experimental instrumental album “ghosts.” Halfway through the show, they brought out a wide range of percussion and other weird instruments. They had marimbas, upright basses, flutes, bells, mixing with live electronica elements — all while some amazing video was going on. The video production was by far the best I’ve ever seen of any show. The band was interacting with the video, “touching” the screen to change it, and having video elements follow them around stage, all in a way that wasn’t pre-set or timed, it was being manipulated in real time, and that was amazing. I can’t figure out how they did half the stuff they were doing. And need I say how great Josh Freese is on drums? Holy crap!

All said and done, it was a great show from one of my favorite bands ever. I love seeing musicians that are hard rockers, yet still are very skilled, professional musicians. They’re definitely a band I want to see every time they come through town.

Do any of you have bands like that, where you just have to see ‘em, no matter how many times you’ve seen ‘em before?