Closure Part One: Self Destruct
Nine Inch Nails' 1994-1996 Self Destruct tour gets documented here in raw concert footage cut together with behind-the-scenes material from backstage and on the road. Trent Reznor and the touring band appear mid-performance, sweat-soaked and confrontational, in the arena and festival sets that made the tour notorious, including the band's chaotic mud-caked Woodstock 1994 set. Between songs the camera catches soundchecks, dressing rooms, and the mechanics of hauling an industrial-rock stage show across the country night after night. There is no narrator walking you through it; the footage is left to speak for the era, when the band was touring behind The Downward Spiral and building the confrontational live reputation that would define them for the rest of the decade. Fans get an unpolished look at the physical toll of the tour and the intensity of the performances, presented as a first-person document rather than a retrospective. It is a time capsule of a specific, punishing stretch of the band's history.