After going on hiatus in 2009 and spending the next few years writing the scores for movies and video games, as well as forming a new band with his wife, Trent Reznor announced in February that Nine Inch Nails was getting back together and planned on touring extensively through 2013 and 2014. On Friday, the band’s Tension 2013 tour came to the Verizon Center and left quite an impression.

Visually, this was one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen production-wise. The band’s lighting team did a masterful job at controlling light fall-off through a large group of movable spotlights that floated above and rotated all over the stage. Some of the lighting concepts from the How To Destroy Angels tour were also used during the middle stretch of the show, as the band performed behind a light curtain that displayed a myriad of patterns, each more mind blowing than the last. There were even light holograms of the band members that appeared on stage during “The Hand That Feeds.”

Oh yes, the music. That wasn’t too shabby either. A majority of set, nine songs total, pulled from the group’s latest album, Hestitation Marks. The main set was spot on, ramping up the aggression with songs like “1,000,000,” “March of the Pigs” and “Wish”,” while mid-tempo pounders like “Terrible Lie” and “Various Methods of Escape” provided some nice variation. The night’s only mis-step was a rather subdued four song encore, which started slow and ominous and never took off from there.