Review: Nine Inch Nails’ Charlotte concert was bold — and occasionally puzzling
At 9:04 on Tuesday night, the curtain shrouding Nine Inch Nails’ B-stage inside a hazy Spectrum Center dropped, revealing lead singer Trent Reznor — now 60 — sitting alone at a piano, bathed in blood-red light.
He didn’t wave. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even look at the Charlotte crowd.
He simply opened Tuesday night’s show with an elegant, unhurried rendition of “(You Made It Feel Like) Home,” which he and longtime collaborator Atticus Ross created for the 2022 film “Bones and All,” as someone shouted, “We love you, Trent!” And when he finished it, he rubbed at his temples and kept staring at the keys, not yet ready to show love back.
It was a bold, almost confrontationally quiet way for an industrial rock band to begin an arena show.
This particular one — the “Peel It Back” tour — has been split by Nine Inch Nails into a four-act production, and as in the 40 cities before it, in Charlotte it proved a visual treat: The band replaced traditional LED screens with translucent scrims that layered the projections and gave the night a warped, three-dimensional feel, while a roaming cameraman weaved through the performers, his images broadcast in frenetic black-and-white close-ups on the giant main screen.
The effect was immersive and often striking. But it couldn’t entirely mask the tension created by Reznor front-loading the set with deep cuts and holding back too many of the band’s best-known tracks until late in the night.
The B-stage opening, for instance, leaned into the more contemplative side of Reznor — who famously reinvented himself in 2010 as a film composer who scored “The Social Network” and “Mank,” adding dimension (and Oscars) to the resumé of one of the early-’90s foremost rock provocateurs.
After the solo-piano opener, the synth-driven “Non-Entity” — a rarely performed track NIN made to support people displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — coaxed out the band, with Ross, guitarist Robin Finck, and bassist Stuart Brooks joining Reznor mid-song. When it ended, he finally acknowledged that 10,000-plus people were in the room with him, springing from the bench as he launched into the moodier “Piggy,” pumping a fist, stalking to the edge of the stage, and gripping the microphone like he intended to snap it. The ferocity of his younger years flashed.
Then he led the band’s charge to the main stage, and its curtain rose next.
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There, Josh Freese — back after being fired by Foo Fighters last year — opened “Wish” with a blistering drum intro, and suddenly the night shifted gears. Frenetic strobe lights pulsed. Reznor strapped on a guitar. “March of the Pigs,” “Reptile,” “Copy of A” and “Gave Up” hurtled at us in rapid succession.
Meanwhile, the sheer curtains came alive with layered projections — solar flares, pulsing wavelengths, images of Reznor casting ghostly echoes of himself across the gauze in duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate. The cameraman darted and crouched, arguably working harder than anyone else in the building to capture those breathless, in-your-face angles.
The production was impressive, even mesmerizing at times.
But for much of the first hour, Nine Inch Nails seemed more interested in doing what it wanted to do than what fans wanted, leaning heavily on EP tracks, rare singles and later-era material. Energy in the arena ebbed and flowed rather than steadily building. Phones stayed largely down — which in this case felt less like reverent immersion and more like a crowd waiting for something to catch fire.
Reznor has always been meticulous about structure. But on Tuesday night, that structure sometimes felt overly deliberate. It simply took too long for the show to lock in.
That said, the first half did have its moments. While delivering 1992’s aggressive EP track “Gave Up,” a small but spirited mosh pit broke out near the front of the floor, reminding everyone that even at 60, Reznor can still ignite a crowd.
And as the 95-minute set entered its second half, the flame turned into a blaze — in no small part because of Boys Noize.
Earlier in the evening, before the headliner came on, the German-Iraqi DJ had opened with a long, brooding set of throbbing basslines worthy of a “Blade” soundtrack. Then, a crowd of fans — many in flannel shirts and ski caps despite an unseasonably warm February night outside — took him in politely, if a little detached.
But when he re-emerged mid-show to collab with Reznor and Ross for Act 3, it all came together.
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Out on that B-stage, Reznor, Ross and Boys Noize formed a tight, inward-facing triangle as the aforementioned able cameraman plunged into the middle of them, filming at times right in front of their faces. Of particular note, a remixed version of “Closer” — NIN’s most iconic song — felt freshly reimagined and yet intact enough to somehow also feel faithful; and when Reznor snarled “I want to f--- you like an animal,” his voice sounded arguably the strongest it had all night.
This section was moody, collaborative and visually kinetic. It finally gave the night the momentum it had been lacking. Things rolled upward from there.
Back on the main stage, Reznor and company ground out three high-energy singles (“The Beginning of the End,” “Less Than” and “The Perfect Drug”) in aggressive succession, punctuated on the latter by Freese’s spectacular machine-gun drumming, a blur of motion that made his departure from Foo Fighters feel even harder to understand.
To this point, Reznor had been sticking to his guns when it came to interacting with the crowd. He’d said almost nothing between songs, unless you count what he said to introduce “Closer” earlier — which amounted to: “Alright, let’s do this.” After “The Perfect Drug,” Reznor seemed almost hesitant as he gave the crowd just a little more banter. “Seriously, thank you,” he said quietly. “It’s a privilege to be able to come and play for Charlotte.”
But then he hurried through band intros and went back to doing what he came to do: play. And he was finally ready to play the songs the crowd had been waiting for.
It was 2005 alt-rock chart-topper “Only,” first, that gave fans a noticeable lift. After that, Grammy-nominated crossover hit “The Hand That Feeds” sparked crowd-surfing and an aggro-but-still-“makes-you-wanna-dance” stance. Then when NIN anthem “Head Like a Hole” hit, the arena transformed into a full-throated singalong, with thousands shout-singing the chorus as Reznor gripped the mic with both hands, eyes squeezed shut in something between agony and triumph.
As rock-god moments go, this was the night’s pinnacle.
In the end, “Hurt” closed things out as it so often does, beginning sparely and somberly and in the glow of flickering cellphone lights. And as Reznor sang, “I am still right here,” the lyric carried old and new resonance at once. He is still here — decades after performing at the old 1313 Club in Charlotte in 1990, after doing four big-amphitheater shows here between 2000 and 2014.
Yes, Tuesday night’s concert was also occasionally puzzling in its choices. Yes, the deep-cut-heavy first half and carefully segmented structure sometimes felt like it was keeping fans in the arena at arm’s length, delaying the release that only fully arrived in the final act.
Yet by the end, as the final chords of “Hurt” echoed through Spectrum Center, few in the building seemed to mind the long road it took to get there.
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Nine Inch Nails’ setlist
Act 1: B-Stage
1. “(You Made It Feel Like) Home”
2. “Non-Entity”
3. “Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)”
Act 2: Main Stage
4. “Wish”
5. “March of the Pigs”
6. “Reptile”
7. “Find My Way”
8. “Copy of A”
9. “Gave Up”
Act 3: B-Stage with Boys Noize
10. “Vessel”
11. “Closer”
12. “Me, I’m Not”
13. “I Came Back Haunted”
Act 4: Main Stage
14. “The Beginning of the End”
15. “Less Than”
16. “The Perfect Drug”
17. “Only”
18. “The Hand That Feeds”
19. “Head Like a Hole”
20. “Hurt”
This story was originally published February 11, 2026 at 5:01 AM.
