The Breakthrough Group of Industrial Dance?

Crazed fans climbing up on the overhead beams and obscuring the stage, a precariously stationed lighting tree threatening to topple, instruments flying around stage. Punk rock 1979? Metal thrash 1987? No, this was an “industrial dance” show by what could be the genre’s breakthrough group, Nine Inch Nails. Some of the Cleveland band’s sound was supplied by tapes, but the near-pandemonium at Helter Skelter on Friday was as live as the speediest radical-rock meltdown.

A skinny, dreadlocked wraith, Nails leader Trent Reznor bears a passing resemblance to Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction, but Reznor is more concerned with clarity than perpetuating a mystique. With three musicians supplementing the tapes, terror tunes like the current KROQ fave “Head Like a Hole” cut through the chaos with razor-sharp vocals, ominous rhythmic dance beats and solid sheets of hard-rock chordings. Reznor’s sacrilegious lyrics might dismay moralists, but Nails’ ability to scratch beneath the surface of post-adolescent rage resulted in a performer-audience bonding as exhilarating--and as dangerous--as new music gets.