If someone had told me when I was 14 that 10 years later I would get to see the last ever new York City Nine Inch Nails show on the last ever Nine Inch Nails tour, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. But my reasoning wouldn’t have been lack of faith in my future self for scoring those tickets, it would have been doubt for it actually being the last NIN tour of all time. My current self agrees. There is no way that was the last New York NIN show for eternity. BUT, if it was, man, what an awesome show.

This is what I realized earlier this morning as I crawled out of bed for work. I felt like I had been run over by a train. My knees hurt. My neck hurt. My ears were buzzing. After the show last night, I had a lot of shit to say about Trent Reznor and the extreme heat of Terminal 5, the shittiness of the sound, my long gone $66 (with fees) and the odd whimper of an encore, but today I feel lucky for having witnessed a God.

That’s right. I wouldn’t say THE God or even MY God, but for the Nine Inch Nails congregation present last night, He is the one and only God no matter how much He says “God is dead” or “There is no god.” He’s it. He loves it. You could see Him eating it up last night, trying his best to remain humble. He knows he’s God. I’m more of a casual Christmas/Easter only parishioner. I only went to one show, not all four like a lot of last night’s crowd. I didn’t know every single word to every single song and I really only felt the need to sing on two good sing alongs, “Burn” and “Suck.” I didn’t freak out when Peter Murphy descended from the rafters upside down to sing “Reptile.” It was cool, but I could have done without. I wasn’t even that excited when Trent finally left the stage after two hours and forty minutes, ending with a cover of Pere Ubu’s “Final Solution.” What I did like came in spurts.

The trio of “La Mer,” “The Frail” and “The Wretched” was my favorite moment of the night. All morning I’ve been singing “Burn” and “Piggy,” which got an interesting remix with some guitar freakouts. The opening of the encore with “Suck” and “Down in It” was excellent. Even after sweating for two hours, the pit had the energy to go completely insane. People were hanging from the balconies and even one crowd surfer faceplanted into a metal bar.

For “Head Like a Hole,” everyone in the crowd held their hands up as Trent sang, “Bow down before the one you serve.” It was a good experience. NIN fans are a dedicated group. Watching them worship Reznor was almost as good as watching the band, which I thought was much better than the last time I saw NIN after the release of With Teeth . I felt a part of something, even if it I wasn’t a raging believer. I headbanged for the hard stuff and swayed for the good soft stuff like “Hurt” and the Fragile piano ballad. I even pumped my fist in the air a couple times, something my 14 year old self would have been proud of.

Thanks smulligannn for the photo.