Nine Inch Nails: And All That Could Have Been

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Industrial rock kings Nine Inch Nails and main man Trent Reznor have a habit of diversionary releases in between their infrequent studio albums. This live album culled from a 2000 American tour — earlier that year NIN also memorably scorched the Auckland Big Day Out — might seem yet another holding-pattern exercise, except, it's too impressive. It contains excitingly belligerent energy throughout its 16 tracks, apart from its few breath-catching reflective tunes which inevitably turn into sonic melt-downs. That set offers quite a NIN best-of, stretching as it does from early anthems Terrible Lie, Sin and Head Like a Hole (all still vital bits of Depeche Mode meets Motorhead) to tracks off 1999's double album The Fragile, like the slow-burning The Wretched. On gripping tracks like that, an alternative title suggests itself: Reznor comes alive.

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