"The Columbus show for the Peel It Back Tour was my second concert I have ever been to, and in fact this show was very important to me because it’s the first concert that I, by myself, have ever driven to and bought a ticket for. I did not go to the show with anyone but I was there for me, and I am happy with what I had to experience. I have been listening to NIN for years now, and Trent and all he has done throughout the years have always been such an inspiration for me to keep going. Very recently I had been going through an exceptionally hard time with all sorts of issues and there have been some days where being inside my mind gets way too claustrophobic, and this show took me out of that for a minute and helped me to just breathe and be calm for a little. Being there to experience this made one of my biggest dreams come true and I can’t thank the band enough. Years ago, I discovered Hurt as my first NIN song. There was something about it that felt so unlike what I’d ever heard before. A certain rawness to it that spoke to the darkest most unkept parts of my soul. I like the beauty in broken things, and NIN to me is a musical representation of that. As far as favorite moments go, my favorite part about the whole concert was the fact that one of the first songs in the setlist was the piggy remix from further down the spiral, it’s my favorite NIN song. :)"

"Been my favorite band since I was 13 and it was a dream come true to see them live. The special effects really added so much to the show. Merch line was really long and I regret not getting anything. I’ve only been to 3 concerts in my life and now I feel like nothing will EVER top that show!"

"I flew in from Austin Texas for the Columbus Ohio show where I met up with my childhood best friend (who drove 7hrs from New York). I’d never seen 'The Perfect Drug' live before, despite seeing NIN dozens of times on prior tours, and seeing it with Josh on drums made it perfect (no pun intended). When Trent opened with 'Home', a paired down piano version, I nearly cried, it was beautiful. Seeing Robin Finck back with NIN again is a treat. Boys Noize really added to the older songs, & hearing stuff again that I’d seen during the Fragility 2.0 tour, but in a different style was really cool. Hands down one of the top live performances I’ve experienced… and I’ve seen thousands of shows over the years. Thank you."

"So this was my first time seeing NIN. I drove down to Columbus from Toledo with one of my friends from work who is a massive NIN fan. I have been a fan of NIN since I was a teenager and I randomly got my hands on Downward Spiral and it truly changed my life. Finally getting to see NIN in concert was an incredible experience. It was the best concert that I’ve ever been to. It made me feel like a teenager again hearing NIN for first time and I really needed that. Since the concert I’ve been taking a deep dive through all of the albums and songs that I haven’t listened to in a long time and it just been so good to go back to all of it. Trent if you some how ever see this, thank you and the band from the bottom of my heart for a fucking amazing night I will never forget!!!"

"It’s shocking when the curtain drops. For an hour, you were sitting before the second stage, red light pulsing occasionally, the atmosphere set by ominous magnetic loops. Then you’re treated to a thumping DJ set by opening act Boys Noize. All of this is prelude, because you don’t expect the naked vulnerability when the curtain on that second stage drops. It looks like a cube dropped in the center of the arena, like something from another dimension has found its way to our reality. The curtain drops and there he is. This man has provided the soundtrack for over thirty years of your life. He’s probably done more to shape the contours of your life than your parents. He’s right there, he’s at a piano, and he begins slowly, but with purpose. He’s taught you what it means to be vulnerable, and you, you’re an open wound that everyone surrounding you in your life can see. You’ve had to learn how to live with that naked vulnerability, because you can’t hide it. You’ve been broken more times than you can count, sometimes by your own hand. And he’s right there.

It’s shocking that he would just appear before everyone like that, intimate, an exposed nerve without the anger and force his music is known for. There’s an eruption of cheers before he pushes down the first chord, before he speaks a word. 'I think you always had a feeling… like you knew it all along.' It’s not even a well-known song, a soft piece emanating from his soundtrack work. Still you know all the words, you speak them quietly in tune with his voice. 'I kept believing I was never meant to be, but maybe I just had it wrong.'

Things are hard right now, things are falling apart all around us. The old world sails into the fog, receding into nothing. We crave some sort of stability, and for some of us, nothing’s ever been stable, least of all our own minds. We yearn for that communal experience, and there’s you, in an arena with thousands of people dressed in black, speaking the words quietly together. Some don’t know them, some shout their adoration, some are still in shock at the closeness, the intimacy. 'In a world that isn’t ours, in a place we shouldn’t be…'

None of us belong. None of us make sense. We are the aberration, always on the outside, always excluded; something within us doesn’t fit, something fallen into disrepair. It looks so easy for everyone else.

'For a minute, just a minute, you made it feel like home.'

I’ve been to three shows on this tour, flown to different cities, driven hours away. What makes me do it? I’ve seen him live many times; I’ve been in the audience for an intimate q & a. He and his wife furnish their home based on the amount I’ve spent on band merchandise.

Sometimes all we need is that familiar voice in the darkness that says, 'I know how it feels.'

His biggest inspiration once sang, 'we were born upside down, born the wrong way round.' The rest of the show is a treatise on this, on the ways society or religion or the nation-state fail us, and all the ways we try to cope with that failure—drugs, sex, self-harm. He sings a rare song called 'Non-Entity,' and that’s all of us in this cathedral of light and sound, non-entities. We scream and jump and dance. We ache for catharsis.

For other people, music is just background noise; it’s something that helps pass the time while you’re doing something else. It didn’t used to be this way. You’d dedicate yourself to what you’d listen to, you’d seek it out and it meant something. Maybe it wasn’t always, 'I know how this feels,' but it was for me. It is for me. It’s a communion through sound and movement and time and space. It’s the chorus between you and me. It’s meeting to strike the chord.

Outside of this place, we’re medicated, antidepressants, anti-anxiety, we’re in therapy, we’re mothers and fathers and children and everywhere and nowhere in between. 'And I will haunt these hills forever, without a reason to believe…' We’re alone in a crowd, we’re exhausted by small talk, we can’t keep up with our friends, we’re overwhelmed by injustice and suffering and hypocrisy. There’s no shortage of reasons for us to shut down. Nothing is enough to keep these horrors at bay. Why do we continue?

'When I can feel you beating inside of me, I have everything I need.'

We continue because we have to. This man likely saved my life just by continually moving forward, by plumbing the darkest depths of his soul and transmuting it to something raw and honest and beautiful and showing me how. I’m a writer myself; I’ve taken those dark parts and put them to the page. When the show is over, when the book is written, you feel empty, you wonder again what it’s all for, because we exist on a continuum where there are no fixed answers and only one end state. Sometimes a minute is all we get.

For a minute, you made it feel like home."