To celebrate my first two-night run of Nine Inch Nails concerts (this is my first of any band), there are no photos from night #2 in a refreshing change to decide to just to soak it all in and enjoy it. Instead it’s time for some charts and graphs and thinking of the shows as a whole.

First of all, damn, 39 unique songs played over the two nights (predictably “Head Like A Hole” and “Hurt” were played both nights). Some set list highlights:

• witnessing the live debut of “Perfect Drug” (about time after 21 years)
• rest in peace David Bowie with an “I’m Afraid Of Americans” cover
• NIN’s cover of Joy Division’s “Dead Souls” for The Crow movie soundtrack

Crunching the numbers, hearing at least half of both The Downward Spiral and Broken over the two nights brings me industrial metal happiness.

Sadly I think we may be at peak NIN lineup of Ilan Rubin, Robin Finck, Alessandro Cortini, Atticus Ross, and Trent Reznor. If anyone leaves, there’s going to be issues. Now that catalog is even more varied with the release of the latest trilogy, a multi-instrumental lineup is required and that’s shown in how there’s at least three people who can play bass, guitar, synth/keys now. This line ups allow NIN to pull any song out from any era rather than focus on a specific album tour + greatest hits sandwich setlist.

Finally, repeating from last night, adding Atticus Ross who produced/programmed albums back in the With Teeth era is a huge bonus to serve your nihilist rage with extra crispy anxiety.

For those going to future shows on the Cold and Black and Infinite tour, you’re in for a treat.

Update: Thanks to r/nin, the graph for night two was wrong. I’ve updated with the corrected chart.