Whining, I was once told a long time ago, will get you nowhere, but in our current "culture of complaint" everybody thinks they have the right to air their grievances. That doesn't mean everybody has to listen to them, but in such an environment some people have elevated whining to an art form.

For the last 40 years, rock has been the preferred delivery system for youthful alienation. Content-wise, there isn't a whole lot that separates Mick Jagger's professed lack of "satisfaction" from Trent Reznor's musical litany of "painful convictions." The difference is that Jagger didn't project dissatisfaction as the primary motivating force in his life. Reznor, on the other hand, has built his career on the belief that he will never be happy. In interviews he admits he has achieved everything materially and artistically he's ever wanted and yet is still profoundly miserable. It's tempting to tell him to get a life, as long as he lets you have the one he replaces.

I was prepared for an evening of towering woe-is-me self-indulgence when I took my seat at the Tokyo Bay NK Hall Jan. 10 for Nine Inch Nails' first ever Japan concert. Over the last four months I've absorbed as much of NIN's newest album, "The Fragile," as I could without taking time away from records I actually enjoyed. But despite the often nerve-shattering power of Reznor's industrial soundscapes, nothing has ever taken hold. Every time I put it on I feel as if I'm starting at zero.

Consequently, I didn't recognize the opener, "Somewhat Damaged," until the vocals kicked in several minutes into the song; which is embarrassing since it's the first cut on the album and one you're as likely to hear as any. One might think a chorus in which the phrase "Too f**ked up to care anymore" is presented as a throat-shredding bilious rant would stick in the mind a little more tenaciously, but my cerebral cortex is funny in that it only hangs onto melody lines, and Reznor is rather stubborn about making sure none contaminate his tunes.

Still, it got to me. Maybe it was the lighting, which was positioned so that when the spots shined down, the beams hit their backs, creating a creepy haloed silhouette effect. A thick-bordered black mask was erected on the proscenium, leaving a smaller rectangle for the band and the junkyard lighting fixtures. It was like watching a diorama -- a very violent diorama.

Though Reznor's reputation for getting dangerously down on stage seems to be either misreported or old news, he and his sartorially daring crew (TR -- conservative blow cut, button-down brown shirt, new jeans; everybody else -- ripped punk regalia ca. 1984) did a lot of spastic jolting that resulted in some inadvertently humorous collisions and a few barked shins.

By the time the raucous "Terrible Lie" segued into "Sin" I would have to say that the music warranted the physicality. Keyboardist Charlie Clouser stood on a riser next to the drums upstage torturing his little instrument to produce some truly scary sounds.

"You're just too stupid to realize," Reznor sang, losing himself in his rage and stumbling against guitarist Robin Finck who promptly fell on his butt with a thhrraangggg! that may not have been choreographed but fit nicely into the stomping cacophony. He then blithely tossed the instrument at someone in the wings. The crowd probably went wild, but I certainly couldn't hear them and the arena was bathed in inky blackness so I couldn't see them either.

After two more metal mindsplitters, both of whose titles contained variants on the word "pig," Reznor played a Satie-esque piano solo that set a melancholy mood for "The Wretched," an orgy of polyrhythms overlaid with a preening wah-wah guitar. The song made up for its lack of melody (by now no longer missed) with a potent funk undercurrent.

"This is what it feels like," he screamed. I have no idea what "it" was, but the music was transfixing and Reznor's vocabulary of everyday disappointment was starting to make sense. Not because I believed he was a truly tormented soul, but because he was doing a damn good imitation of one.

As his purported self-loathing turned outward in the caustically plainspoken punk thrash of "No, You Don't," several dozen strobes started to do this insidious epileptic thing until the entire arena felt like the interior of one of those bug zappers that hang outside convenience stores: sound, fury and headache-inducing blue lights. I'm glad I ate beforehand.

A scrim descended in front of the musicians and things calmed down for "La Mer," a pretty piece filled with ambient keyboards. While filmed images of the open sea were projected on the scrim, Reznor's lone figure stood illuminated behind it.

"I will take my place in the great below," he sang, and then there were images of mitosis, capillary action, heart valves, dead flies and the inevitable spermatozoa converging on an ovum. I was all set to be bored when the scrim seemed to catch on fire and the band launched into the Pink Floydish reverie of "The Way Out Is Through."

The set ended with a furious recounting of their greatest hits, climaxing in the song that started it all, "Head Like a Hole." With its late-'80s industrial dance style, it sounded quaint, especially when the entire audience pumped their fists and happily sang along to the chorus, "You're gonna get what you deserve."

During the lengthy encore, Reznor spoke to the audience for the first and only time, mentioning that it had taken him 10 years to make it to Japan and that we were a "fantastic" audience. He said this after having just banged out a bracingly violent version of "Starf**kers, Inc.," which sends up his self-made image in typically simplistic Reznor fashion: "I'll be there for you as long as it works for me/I play a game, it's called insincerity."

Well, as long as it's this entertaining and no one gets hurt, I'll take insincerity every time.

"This is our favorite song," he announced and the band finished the night with "Hurt," an inert downer with no churning metal component. "I focus on the pain," Reznor whined, "the only thing that's real."

Hey, Trent, I feel your pain.

(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)