closer to god?

I always look at Trent and religion in a sense of progression on the albums. In "terrible lie" (well, on pretty hate machine), you'll notice that Trent capitalizes words like Jesus, Christ, God, Purity, Heaven, etc., etc...but on broken and the downward spiral, you'll notice that not even God is capitalized.

You can also see the progression in the subject matter. On PHM the general feeling (at least for me) is that of one who believes in a deity -- believes in His existence, anyway -- and has put trust in Him in the past, but is upset about where that got him...more of an angry, confused questioning. On broken, Trent expresses the anger directed at said entity, but not so much as a personal message to God as he did in "terrible lie" ("hey God"). In "wish," he makes more of a side reference to an entity no longer believed in. Finally there's the culmination in TDS: In "heresy" (as well as smaller bits of the "heresy" theme in "mister self destruct"), the message is much more blatant.

You get a progression from "I believe in God, but I don't understand why He's doing this to me" to "I believed in a god, and look where that got me," and finally to "your god is dead and no one cares."

I kind of find it ironic, actually, how Trent's faith dwindled as his success increased...but maybe that's just me.

-- lucian X