I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: February 14, 2026] Boys Noize

I saw Nine Inch Nails open for Skinny Puppy 37 years ago.  And never saw them again.  But not because I didn’t like them, it just never happened.  Recently, my son said he was interested in seeing them so when they announced the continuation of this tour and it was in Jersey, I was like, hell yea, lets go.

I grabbed us seats straight back (the floor would have been awesome but unrealistic and too expensive).  And I figured we’d have the perfect view.

Getting into Newark is always a pain in the ass.  I’d rather go to Philly.  However, in this case our show had a better setlist than Philly so, hooray.

We showed up a little later than I intended but parking was a breeze (amazingly) and  then we saw what looked like a massive line to get into the place.  And holy crap it was a massive massive massive line.  There were thousands of people in various lines all clumped together and no one seemed to know what was going on.  No one from the venue was directing anyone.  And people were MAD.  My son and I accidentally cut the line and were in the middle of one of the massive lines, so we wound up getting in a little after 8. Some people missed part of NIN’s set, I have heard.  But we arrived and could hear that Boys Noize had started.

I didn’t know much about Boys Noize (who is Alexander Ridha a German-Iraqi DJ), I listened to a song or two but was kind of meh about them.  So we didn’t care that we missed them.  We got on the merch line and when we got closer my son said he didn’t really like any of the shorts.  And I was surprised that I didn’t either.  So we left the line and found our seats,

They were great.  lower level straight back.  Except that there was a massive power cable bundle running from floor to ceiling literally right in front of us.  It split the stage in half and was unavoidable.  I was lucky there was no one next to me because otherwise it was blocking Trent the whole time.

While we were on the merch line we could hear Boys Noize, and to me it just sounded like a loud drum beat.  When we finally got to our seat (and put earplugs in (Jesus he was loud) we were right behind the DJ.  He was on a small stage (not the B stage) and was tinkering with equipment as he mixed and added songs.  But mostly it was a (very) loud drum beat.  It was kind of weird.

Once in a while there were snippets of songs, including Down In It which only made me realize that I really wanted to hear that song–but NIN didn’t play it.  Occasionally there would be pauses and the crowd would clap loudly and then he would start up the loud drum beat again.  I wound up doing the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle and finished the whole thing–it was too loud to talk and there wasn’t anything to look at.

It wasn’t great.  While on the merch line, my son said he really only liked the Boys Noize merch, but we both agreed we wouldn’t be buying any after that set.

However I will say that adding Boys Noize to the B stage during the middle of the set was genius and he was a integral part of the mixing of those older songs.  But if you’re going, you can miss that opening set and not feel bad–and this is coming from someone who hates missing an opening act.

It went until about 9:05 and then suddenly Trent was playing piano.