Nine Inch Nails Blows the Roof Off of Sacramento’s Golden One Center

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- You wouldn’t know watching him bounce between two different stages for a nearly two hour set on March 16 at Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center but Trent Reznor, lead singer of Nine Inch Nails, is 60 years old.

Normally age isn’t worth noting in a concert performance except when it becomes yet another thing the legendary front man seems to defy. The energy from Nine Inch Nails on display in Sacramento resembled more a teenaged punk rock routine vs a collection of aging rockers performing the last show of a 60 plus date tour in what was rumored to be the last Nine Inch Nails show ever. Nearly 50 yards apart the band performed on two different stages, beginning on what was labeled Stage B sprinting over to the Main stage and back again multiple times throughout the performance – take that Mick Jagger!

Reznor and Nine Inch Nails are legendary performers known for elaborate set designs from their frolic in the mud at Woodstock in 1994 to their tour with David Bowie in 1995 as the opening act, a performance noted by a 2012 Rolling Stone reader’s poll as one of the top 10 opening acts in rock history. But back to 2026 and Sacramento where screens surrounding the band projected the performance to the more than 17,000 seat venue in lieu of the typically present jumbotron.

All of Nine Inch Nails’ considerable musical tools were on display from the very beginning of the show which featured Trent Reznor, alone at his piano for a rendition of “Something I Can Never Have” from 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine. Slowly ratcheting up the intensity as more band members came on stage, the initial Stage B performance ended with “Piggy” from The Downward Spiral.

The audience, now fully primed, exploded into chaos as the opening, pounding bass drum notes of one of Nine Inch Nails most outwardly aggressive tracks, “Wish” from the 1992 release Broken rattled the rafters erupting from the main stage. There is just something absolutely life-affirming in witnessing thousands of bodies pulsating in rhythm to the music as mosh-pits emerge and dissolve within the crowds like jetties on a river. For some people that moment comes when cell phones replace lighters for the slow/slower tracks, for me it comes in the form of raw, sweety, sensuality as Reznor growls “Wish there was something real, wish there was something true, wish there was something real in this world full of you” his minions for the moment below paying worship to their king above. No instrument or computer was spared in the performance!

Reznor has cited a multitude of influences in his career ranging from electronic music pioneers such as Brian Eno, Gary Numan, and Kraftwerk; the heavy guitar influence of industrial rock luminaries, Ministry and Skinny Puppy; the art of artists such as David Bowie and Pink Floyd and performance as art aesthetic of Queen. Most notably, Reznor places David Bowie as one of the most influential artist to him, in an interview with FarOut Magazine, Reznor said:

“After getting to know him and becoming friends with him, it’s been an inspiration not only in his music and his career but also his life… I met him when I was about to bottom out, and it was somebody that had bottomed out, and I saw that there was hope on the other end. Life wasn’t about sitting around AA meetings, smoking cigarettes, reliving the glory days. His life was a shitload better than it was.”

In this current era of exorbitant ticket prices where each concert can be an exercise in questioning your life choices, catching a Nine Inch Nails performance will never fail you. Over the course of more than 30 years, Trent Reznor and company have yet to land a dud with no indication that future performances will be anything less than the continued march toward legendary status.