NIN + Boys Noize praise

Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize made their first full Coachella set together on Saturday night, turning the Sahara stage into a remix-heavy industrial dance show. (rollingstone.com) The collaboration performed as Nine Inch Noize at 8 p.m. Pacific time on April 11 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, during Weekend One of Coachella 2026. Festival coverage and schedule reports said the set had been moved from Friday to Saturday before the performance. (theverge.com, edm.com) Setlist reports and fan-shot tracklists said the show ran through 11 songs, including “Closer,” “Heresy,” “Copy of A,” “Came Back Haunted,” and “As Alive as You Need Me to Be.” Mariqueen Maandig joined onstage for “Heresy” and “Parasite,” a How to Destroy Angels song. (setlist.fm, ninlive.com, 1001tracklists.com) Reviews published after the set described it as one of the most talked-about performances from the festival’s first weekend. Consequence called it a “nightmare rave,” while the Los Angeles Times review carried by Yahoo said the Sahara format let the act build an unusually elaborate presentation. (consequence.net, yahoo.com) The pairing had been more than a one-off booking before Saturday. Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize announced a collaborative album, also called “Nine Inch Noize,” on April 8, with a release date of April 17. (variety.com, consequence.net) That album announcement followed earlier work between Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Boys Noize on remix and score projects. Nine Inch Nails reference sites and music reports tied the Coachella performance to the same run of collaborations and to material developed around the Peel It Back tour. (nin.wiki, nin.wiki) Coachella’s 2026 lineup placed the act in the Sahara tent, a stage usually associated with electronic music and large-scale dance production. That setting fit Boys Noize’s club background and pushed Nine Inch Nails songs into harder techno and synth-driven arrangements. (coachellavalley.com, brooklynvegan.com) The set is scheduled to return for Coachella’s second weekend on April 18. After the first night in Indio, the project arrived with a clearer shape: not a cameo, but a full live format with its own name, visuals, and catalog. (setlist.fm, variety.com)