Waved Goodbye

It was a curious transition. An hour before, the big screen in the only resto-bar nearby beamed the mammoth crowd morphing into a sea of yellow and the ubiquitous fingers in L. The Funeral. The big day out, amplified to hysterical heights. The crowds came; some in all sincerity and the others out of sheer curiosity. The media networks characteristically cashed in. We talked of everything except the one unfolding in the big screen, brandy shot after another.

Jumpcut to one hour after. We had settled ourselves with no concealed deadly weapons and sharp objects, the guards in the gates had been unrelenting. The spread was a sea of bobbing heads; the fingers were not in L but in the devil’s horn. We were not in The Funeral. Nine Inch Nails straight from London was about to kick-off the Asian leg of its Wave Goodbye tour. We were a few meters away from the stage. At 45 past 7, the entrance was made sans drama and flair. Trent Reznor stood in the shadows unassuming and catatonic. No obligatory Mabuhay Manila Kumusta Kayo spiel. The silence was soon broken, brutally.

Somewhat Damaged opened the whole set, the way it rocket-launched Nine Inch Nails’ hauntingly brilliant left and right album The Fragile in 1999. The hundred or so backdropping spotlights spewed blinding neon as the song lurched in Armageddon drums and explosive off-timed buzz-saw rhythms. All hell had broken loose. Right off the bat—seconds after the show had commenced—Fink smashed a guitar and tumbled a monstrous speaker against another boulder of a contraption. The bobbing heads started to push, shove and hit each other. It was time to break things into pieces. I started throwing things to my seatmates. If only Mar Roxas can sing with Trent Reznor along these lines: “made the choice to go away/Drink the fountain of decay/Tear a hole exquisite red/Fuck the rest and stab it dead”.. that Roxas guy will be my prez.

With just a hurried thank you as interval, the lights went berserk again and the familiar lines of Terrible Lie filled the cavernous Araneta Coliseum. The song must have been included in the controversial NIN songs allegedly used by the military to torture inmates of Guantanamo, a ruckus which made Trent so angry NIN came out with With Teeth album in 2005. This is a political rally-worthy song. If only the street troubadours in Mendiola and Edsa can scream primeval and bellow to the end “terrible lie/terrible lie/terrible lie/terrible lie/i really don't know what you mean./seems like salvation comes only in our dreams.” The smoke and phosphorescence started to levitate and enveloped the rafters. We were awash with dead stars emission which traveled from 15 years past.

The next pit stop was a barrage, a scattershot retrospective from The Downward Spiral: Heresy, March of the Pigs, Piggy, Closer, Reptile and finally The Becoming. Trent in a recent interview hinted on this excursion: “It is also exciting for us to play songs we haven’t played from a long time and not to play some expected hits that we were sick of playing. So we dug into that particularly dark era of Downward Spiral quite heavily.” Except for the first song in the stretch when NIN was a screaming Nietszche, it was a sing along moment while drenched with lights from the multiverse of a stage. Curses and cusses aside, the members displayed their dexterity with their art as they shuttled from instrument to another, from a song to the next. Curses, cusses and so many wrecked guitars aside, Piggy highlighted the set, or rather put the show to its creepiest; the slow, creeping sound of wayward piano lines engorged by feedbacks, eerie beats and hollow intonations of being “black and blue with broken bones.” The horror movie we dare not to see had just been made aural.

The stage lifted its shroud on the dying beats of The Becoming when Trent gasped “goddamn this noise inside my head.” NIN shifted gears and went to post 911 US of A and there thrashed and hollered about the America that they don’t want to be in. The brilliant lights soon were sucked by dead air and a somber spotlight flickered in the balance. Waves in blue fluttering in midair ushered the familiar piano strains of one of NIN’s most brilliant pieces, La Mer. The drums followed suit and then in one organic assault, layered and distorted melodies joined the fray in one strange translation of the language of the sea. Seconds after the closing strains, the breaking glass kicks of the drums towed Fragile and two other songs separated by terse thank yous. We had by then lost our voices already and had been seeing searing images from the interplay of lights pulsated by the stage in perpetual cosmic chaos.

Just Like You Imagined was next unleashed so like the phalanx of Spartans swooping the narrow ends of Thermopylae. The song is not just a 300 movie moment; it was and still is the most complex song NIN has ever composed. It was layered beyond comparison. Disturbing effects and classical piano kicked the song to a roll. Then the drums thundered, and then the guitars screeched like cars crashing to the sides. The song built itself to a cathedral cadence, and then the synths and the beats recoiled to start again. NIN solemnly articulated the Spartans’ kill-and-maim chants. We raised our hands in surrender. We could already stop and call it history right there.

But NIN, not being a metered parrot boombox as all pop acts are, accelerated to Echoplex, The Day The World Went Away (Terminator Salvation mix), Ghostrider (The Crow in a rare flashback), Hand That Feeds and to the boisterous Head Like A Hole. The lights went out. The somber and brooding spotlight remained and lighted the piano. We knew that was coming. With the guitar quietly leading the charge, Trent Reznor sang hauntingly. In lieu of candles, lighters, phones and gadgets were lighted and raised until the song crashed with feedbacks as its conclusion. Trent spoke: “Finally, we’ve done it in Manila!” or words to that effect. The lights went out and the stage quiet. We went quiet as well and then milled to the exit with the ghost faces in NIN’s The Slip album.

The funeral was still the lone scoop in the daily news. The big screen though appeared blurred. Either we’d burned our eyes already or the brandy’s making tricks. The waitress signalled for our last order. One last shot. Had Trent cared for our heroes, he should have included I’m Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally from The Fragile. But that would be utterly disrespectful. It was a long procession. At 20 past 11 and with the rains at bay, we called it a day.