Beyond hurt

"There were nights when I used to be so depressed that I would look out at the audience and resent them because they got to go home and have a good time, and the show was the only time I had any fun," he said. "I'd go back to the hotel room and have panic attacks. I totally lost my soul."

Airtime for single

Six years between albums can be an eternity for an artist, and Reznor worried about whether there would still be an audience waiting if he made another album.

That question won't be fully answered until the new album hits stores, yet the evidence so far is encouraging.

Rock radio stations around the country have put "The Hand That Feeds," the first single from the album, in heavy rotation, and tickets for nearly 40 stops on a U.S. and European theater tour were all sold in minutes. The show here in Reno was a warmup for Reznor's headlining spot at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on May 1.

But the most convincing measure of Reznor's continuing impact is in the devotion of the hundreds of fans, mostly in their 20s, who began lining up at 8 a.m. for the 9 p.m. concert at the Reno Hilton theater.

Many were wearing souvenir T-shirts from past Nine Inch Nails tours, and they couldn't have looked more like outsiders as they sat patiently for hours on the casino floor, squeezed in between hundreds of middle-aged men on their right competing in a poker tournament and scores more on their left placing bets on the NCAA basketball tournament.

"A lot of people think that if you listen to depressing music, it will make you more depressed," said Brian Stephens, 22, who drove eight hours from Panorama City with a friend. "But what really happens is the music helps you feel better because you realize that others have the same questions and doubts in life."

Like others in line, Stephens had no idea of the notoriously private Reznor's addiction. But he could tell from "The Fragile," perhaps the darkest album ever to reach the national top 10, that the songwriter was going through depression, and he figured the delay in the new album was writer's block.

Once Reznor hit the stage in the theater, which has featured the likes of Frank Sinatra and Tom Jones, the fans reacted strongly to the new material, often picking up on the words so fast that they were singing along by the end of the number.