Trent Reznor is breaking all the rules, you guys! How scandalous!
With Nine Inch Nails entirely back on the rock circuit after a four-year hiatus, nucleus Trent Reznor seems intent on breaking all boundaries of perceived character for the pioneering industrial project.
Antiquiet reports that on Wednesday in Tokyo, Reznor did what many rock fans consider to be unthinkable: he brought his wife, Mariqueen Maandig of Reznor’s other band How To Destroy Angels, onstage to perform two HTDA songs with the NIN lineup.
Performances of “Ice Age” and “BBB,” while excellently executed, are sending shockwaves through the NIN-purist fan community, with many outraged that Trent would bring his very own Yoko Ono onstage during a Nails performance. To her credit, Mariqueen is a damn sight better sounding and looking than John Lennon’s spastically shrieking pop culture nightmare widow, but where there have previously been clearly defined borders between projects and musical pollination, the line has effectively begun to blur – as you can see below.
Does the performance matter at all in the grand arc of NIN’s legacy? Absolutely not. Does this signal some grand shift in the orchestration of both bands? Reznor knows better, and could likely give a rat’s ass if Josh Homme, Jack White, Dave Grohl or Maynard James Keenan have a different set of rock n’ roll principles when involving their significant other in live or recorded performance.
Purists and nitpickers be damned; Reznor is enjoying himself while touring with his signature project, and playing two badass semi-covers in the middle of a show in Japan hardly marks the sign of a tectonic shift in the Nine Inch Nails universe.
Photo: Johnny Firecloud
