01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, June 24, 2006

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Pop Music Writer

MANSFIELD -- It was a dark night at the Tweeter Center last night, as Nine Inch Nails, Bauhaus and Peaches took turns exploring different aspects of angst, alternately giving it angry and melancholic vent.

For nearly 20 years, Nine Inch Nails (really Trent Reznor, the only permanent member) has taken the trappings of electronic dance music and combined it with the anger and heavy-hitting of rock. On record, the balance usually tends toward the electronic side, but in live performance (and last night was no exception), the rock side won out, thanks to a four-piece live band.

The band opened with "Somewhat Damaged" behind a sort of retractable fence and moving into the fast "You Know What You Are?" (from last year's With Teeth album) with lickety-split drumming that mimicked a drum machine, into the unhinged Italo-disco of "Sin."

Hardcore mixed with synthesizers on "March of the Pigs" and "Broken," dance-floor pounders got a dose of anger in songs such as "Give Up" and the obvious closer, the group's breakthrough hit "Head Like a Hole." "Nonentity" was another highlight, a Sabbath-esque plodder with elegant piano touches.

The only missteps were the ballads, as "Something I Can Never Have" was overwrought, as was "Hurt," in which Reznor made it painfully clear that his song, as powerful as it is, has been forever stolen from him by Johnny Cash's cover shortly before his death.

Still, the Nine Inch Nails formula has been often imitated in the 17 years since their first album, Pretty Hate Machine, and it's good to see the originals at work.

The proto-Goth band Bauhaus, back on tour for roughly a year with all the original members, preceded Nine Inch Nails, and the gloom that launched a thousand bands was still intact. Frontman Peter Murphy played up the visual drama, imitating flight during "Severance," throwing rose petals at band and audience members alike, and always making sure he was dramatically lit from below or above. (While "Third Uncle" and "Double Dare" also made the set list, their classic "Bela Lugosi's Dead" didn't.)

The key to Bauhaus is drummer Kevin Haskins and his lack of a stereotypical backbeat. Combined with bassist David J's elemental plucking, it makes for the spare, otherworldly feel that helps create the gloom that Murphy and guitarist Daniel Ash inhabit.

Peaches, the youngest act on the bill, threatened to sound the most retro. Singer Peaches' neurotic hiccup, as well as wails and shouts reminiscent of the B-52's crossed with Nina Hagen, combined with primitive distorted guitar and synthesizer and old-school electronic drums on such songs as "Two Guys for Every Girl," began to sound like canned New Wave. But all changed when drummer Samantha Maloney switched to real drums, as her pounding gave extra power to "Rock Show," "Set It Off" and the last song, whose title is unprintable (but saw Peaches take a lap around the daylight audience).