By: Jared Gudnason

September 15, 2025

It’s a wild trajectory for someone whose first studio album, Pretty Hate Machine, to amass over a million fans across the last 30 years. But more on that later.

In 2010, David Fincher directed, and Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay for The Social Network. Around that time, Nine Inch Nails’ (NIN) Trent Reznor, the band’s primary songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, was its sole official member. Most notably, he composed the soundtrack for Fincher’s film.

However, on Aug. 17 in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, there was another co-composer to Reznor’s score: British musician Atticus Ross. Six years after the film’s release, Ross was officially inducted into the band. He became the only other person added to NIN in a professional capacity.

I was seated on the southeastern side of the (now semi-renamed) Xcel Energy Center, up in the nosebleeds. Reznor opened the set promptly at 9 p.m. with the closing track from 2005’s With Teeth, which I bought back in the day on CD with Mom’s blessing (no explicit lyrics sticker).

Minneapolis photographer Andy Wilcox brought 16 rolls of film to document the show from every vantage point. We met in the third-floor lobby just as support act Boys Noize was wrapping up his DJ set five minutes before nine. Boys Noize would later return to perform about five songs collaboratively during NIN’s set.

With a NIN-logo-emblazoned all-access photo pass on my friend’s chest, who coincidentally wore the same logo, we caught up and parted ways shortly after.

At 9:01 p.m., I took a sip and sat in awe of the man at the piano on the miniature stage at the center of the concrete-floored hockey rink. Melancholic and quiet, the notation pierced northward, cutting through sound latency and setting the tone. Pun absolutely intended.

The next two songs came from what is arguably NIN’s magnum opus, The Downward Spiral. The album was released in early 1994, before the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. Originally on the now-defunct TVT Records, the single “Closer,” whose music video was heavily edited for MTV, was performed as a note-for-note remix about a third of the way through the set.

The Downward Spiral was recorded at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, a location infamous for its history. Other tracks from the album performed that night included “March of the Pigs,” “Mr. Self Destruct,” “Reptile,” “Wish,” and Reznor’s encore closer, “Hurt.”

Reznor, Ross and company, including recently departed Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese, put on one of the best shows I’ve ever witnessed. The level of artistic mastery was nearly unparalleled. Of course, any massive arena production is a singular experience, so credit is due to the sound and stage crew.

The only song performed from Pretty Hate Machine was “Head Like a Hole,” Reznor’s first-ever single. To reference “Hurt” again, almost immediately before his death in 2003, Johnny Cash, who once performed at the Minnesota State Fair, recorded a cover that introduced the song to an entirely new audience. It arguably bridged two distinct music communities.

A necessary feat to fill at least 15,000 seats at the Xcel.