\"Josh Freese helped us out by playing the Salt Lake City and Denver shows as a substitute, while Alex Carapetis took over tonight in Chicago. We played the set with Alex for the first time at midnight the night before... not exactly how I like to do things but the only other alternative was to cancel more shows and I am not going to do that. I can\'t begin to tell you what a difficult job it is to replace your drummer in this band, and these guys have truly risen to the high-pressure situation that it is.\"

New sticksman Alex Carapetis was born and raised Adelaide, Australia. After moving to the States in February 2005, Carapetis has worked as a session drummer, including a demo for Lenny Kravitz and recording the soundtrack for Vince Vaughn\'s film The Wedding Crashers.

As previously reported, Nine Inch Nails\' regular skinsman, Jerome Dillon, was forced to leave the tour because of his struggle with a newly discovered heart condition.

The drummer blamed \"fatigue and exhaustion\" as the cause in a post on his message board. Dillon explained:

\"The decision was made to hire replacement drummers (for this leg) to allow me enough time to adjust to medication and to also spend time pursuing my true passion...gardening.\"