I thought of posting this topic that's probably as old as Nine Inch Nails, or The Downward Spiral itself. Regardless of your own religion, what do you think of songs like Terrible Lie, Heresy, and The Wretched? I get that it's about the character, and how Trent was singing about the flaws, manipulation, coercion, and corruption or organized religion though. And I'm sorry if this is a very bad or redundant topic, but I've always found it interesting.

I also saw it at the old ETS, but it said Christianity instead of religion, so I thought I'd just make it say religion instead to cover other religions in general. I also couldn't find it on the new ETS, and I really hoped to see if somebody made another one again. I didn't find it, so I just thought of making this one.

I also had a friend who was a Christian that I actually got into Nine Inch Nails back in the With Teeth and Year Zero years. He ended up loving Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, and even The Downward Spiral the most to my surprise. It wasn't until he actually started to pay attention to the lyrics of Terrible Lie, Wish, Heresy, Closer, and The Wretched that he become very uncomfortable and made a conscious effort and decision to abstain from all Nine Inch Nails on the account of those songs being blasphemous and sacrilegious to him. I think he actually got offended when I was watching Beside You In Time with him. (I was hanging out with him and his cousin who was another NIN fan, and the lyrics were on, and Terrible Lie was playing.)

The other time was with another friend from the same church. (I grew up Adventist BTW, so they were Adventists.) We attended a NIN concert in 2009 at the Jones Beach Theater at Wantagh, NY, with the same cousin. Who not surprisingly, wasn't even religious so he never had a problem with any of NIN's songs. Anyway, after the concert was over, he actually said something like, "I liked the entire set-list except one song." in a little sarcastic tone. And he was obviously referring to Heresy at the time, but we still had a good time nonetheless. However, not surprisingly, he gave up on Marilyn Manson for having an album like Antichrist Superstar out, yet he's still willing to put up with Heresy and The Wretched.

But yeah, that's pretty much my experience with Christians listening to NIN in real life. There was another one too who was yet another friend from the same church, but it wasn't for Terrible Lie or Heresy or anything like the other reasons mentioned above. He just found the moods to be negative.