It still doesn’t seem possible: Nine Inch Nails are doing the music for a Disney movie.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have provided the score for an animated film under the Disney umbrella before (Pixar’s quietly excellent Soul), but not as Nine Inch Nails, the industrial rock heavyweights who gave us “I want to f*ck you like an animal” and “God is dead, and no one cares.” The branding matters; “Featuring music from Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo” doesn’t carry the same weight as “featuring music from Daft Punk.”
Speaking of, Nine Inch Nails followed in the neon-lit footsteps of synth pioneer Wendy Carlos (1982’s Tron) and Daft Punk (2010’s Tron: Legacy) by creating over 70 minutes of new music for a new Tron movie, Tron: Ares.
The first taste of the soundtrack was “As Alive As You Need Me To Be,” and if there was concern that NIN was going to smooth out their seductive nihilism for Disney, it vanished the second the menacing-sounding synths kicked in. This thing sounds massive and — an even greater compliment — right at home between the unlikely strip club anthem “Closer” and the startling “Came Back Haunted.” That’s where Nine Inch Nails placed “As Alive As You Need Me To Be” during the Brooklyn stop of the Peel It Back Tour this week.
This was the closest Trent and Atticus came to representing their cinematic side gig during the brilliant concert — at least officially. The immersive Peel It Back Tour is a triumph of sound, obviously, but also sight. It could have been a movie, and Nine Inch Nails were the stars.
The briskly paced 20-songs-in-100 minutes set was divided between two stages: an intimate B-stage in the middle of the crowd where Trent kicked things off with a solo performance of “Right Where It Belongs” before the rest of the band joined him one by one, Stop Making Sense-style; and the main stage, which was adorned with an illuminated translucent fabric that made the concert look like it was projected on a movie theater screen.
A hard-working videographer running around the stage with a handheld camera to catch the band at their most picturesque angles added to the effect. So did Trent, as physically imposing as ever even at 60 years old, being surrounded by projections of himself. You better believe the lights were a glow of blood-red, like the dominant color palette in Tron: Ares.
Nine Inch Nails never officially took an encore; The final section of the show flowed freely from a timely cover of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid Of Americans” to a pumped-up “The Hand That Feeds” to the cathartically loud “Head Like A Hole” to the heartwrenching closer “Hurt.”
After Trent vowed to find a way, a curtain bearing the Nine Inch Nails logo descended from above and covered the stage, signaling it was time to go. But there was one song left: Angelo Badalamenti’s “Laura Palmer’s Theme” from Twin Peaks, one of the most gorgeous pieces of music ever recorded, played over the speakers. It served as THE Nine Inch Nails‘ outro music, and a reminder that in 30 years, another arena band might bid farewell with a NIN or Trent & Atticus composition — possibly even something from Tron: Ares.
