long time, no post. I've been workin' hard recently... However, I've had the chance to witness what might be the best concert I've seen: NIN at the Bell Centre on Novembrer 12th.
We (me and my concert bud Ghis) went in line at 5:00 PM to get our VIP tickets from the NIN fan club. These tickets gave us early access to the GA floor, so we ended in having a pretty good view of the whole thing.
Trent was in great, great shape, and the band was as good as it gets. Most of all, the sound was near-perfect, and, of course, the production and the stage show were absolutely fantastic. Lights everywhere, a lot of dynamical effects using 3 walls of animated LED's. On top of being an incredible addition to a stage set, the band even used this system has an instrument at some point.
And the sound. For the second time seeing them, I'm coming back impressed about the quality of the sound. Even if the music is loud, distorted, and with many many layers, NiN's live sound is clear, detailed, and just loud enough. Many many sound engineers should learn from them...
Coming back to the state production, you had to be there and witness it to understand. You can go back to one of my previous post, where I linked to a Wired article. Moreover, the company doing the light system has posted a great video on NiN's youtube site detailing their work (by the way, this is a company from Montreal).
Apparently, I am not the only one that was impressed by all the aspects of the concert: see a review from Montreal's La Presse.
In retrospect, it is obvious to me that the music Trent Reznor has been putting out in the past couple of years as been it's best ever. And I've been raving about his past 2 albums (The Slip being in my mind his best, more mature, melodic and artistic album yet), and he played a lot of them. The Ghost break, where he and his band played acoustic songs from his instrumental Ghost album was amazing. Jazzy, subtle, and would have surprised anyone thinking that NIN is all about noise and agression.
The more I thing about it, the more I'd like to describe NIN as the Pink Floyd of the '90s. And I'm pretty sure that we are just starting to hear the best of what Reznor can offer.
PS: Oh, by the way, as much as I hate people getting their cell phone out during concerts, I just had to take these pictures for this blog.
PPS: Apparently, Chris Cornell is in Montreal this Sunday. Just figured this out last week, and got my ticket :P... I just hope he won't play too much of his last album's songs... More about this in a few days.
PPPS: Just as I finish writing this post, here is what I see... There has got to be a DVD of this tour at some point, it just is too incredible. However, this clip does not really do justice to what it really is...
