Fans who attended the Nine Inch Nails concert at Webster Hall here in NYC, NY last night were treated to a truly historic performance. For the first and only time, according to Trent Reznor himself, the entirety of NIN‘s masterpiece album The Downward Spiral (halo 8, originally released in March 1994) was performed live in concert. As some of you are well aware, NIN are currently on the final leg of their Wave Goodbye Tour which is, reportedly, the last batch of live performances from Nine Inch Nails. Clearly, TR wants to make these last shows ever ones for the record books because an historic show like the one that took place last night was really a very special one. Before the show began, NIN announced on its official Twitter profile that there was gonna be a “cool setlist” for last night’s show … “cool” doesn’t begin to describe:

Of course, fans who have seen the band perform live since The Downward Spiral was released in ’94 have heard many if not all of the songs from the album performed live (me included, especially on the Self Destruct Tour 94-95, tho I understand that A Warm Place has never been performed live in concert before) … but NEVER has the album been performed live, in sequential order. To be honest, I had been made privy to the plan for one of the final Wave Goodbye Tour shows to feature a live performance of The Downward Spiral but A.) I couldn’t let myself believe that such an amazing occurrence would really happen because I’d be so crushed if it never came to be and B.) even if I truly believed such an occurrence would happen, I thought for sure it wouldn’t happen so soon (last night’s Webster Hall show was only the 2nd of the final batch of shows). NIN played a show at Bowery Ballroom on Saturday August 22 and that show was filmed by 5 different cameras, earlier yesterday NIN announced via its official Twitter profile that because of Livenation‘s exorbitant usage fees (they own Webster Hall) they would not be able to officially film the Webster Hall show … which sucks ENTIRELY considering the epic nature of the event. I suspect the audio of last night’s show was recorded at least and fans were allowed to record the show with their own video cameras in the audience so hopefully a video record of last night’s show will make its way to fans at some point. It is my hope that as many fans as possible were able to attend the concert last night (NIN also announced via Twitter that a small number of tickets were available for sale at the last minute before the start of last night’s show) because, as any NIN fan knows, the Webster Hall concert will prolly exist for all time as THE Nine Inch Nails show you didn’t want to miss.

Trent Reznor did not stop to speak to the audience at any time during the portion that the band played The Downward Spiral but once they finished the final song from the album, he did pause to address the crowd, saying:

“I always wanted to play that whole record. That’s the only time we’re going to do it.”

The band then launched the next batch of songs that included Terrible Lie, Metal, Burn, Suck, Physical and more. Actually, the songs played after the TDS songs made up a pretty kickass setlist of its own. Altho TR closed his personal Twitter account, he did use the official NIN Twitter account to post a message to fans after last night’s performance:

That was a FUN (and exhausting) show to play tonight! Thanks to all who attended. (TR)

And to Trent Reznor, I say THANK YOU for a truly unforgettable concert experience. The Webster Hall show will be tough to beat (if that is even possible) but I cannot wait to see what is in store for the rest of the Wave Goodbye shows. Will NIN perform other albums (perhaps Pretty Hate Machine, The Fragile and/or Year Zero) in their entirety? What about special guest appearances (folks keep hoping David Bowie will show up on stage)? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I will post my full personal review of the show (including my photos and video) later on today but a truly legendary performance like the one I witnessed last night deserves a special post all its own.