This paper explores the popular allure of the abject in the music of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, specifically in the song “Closer” and its accompanying music video. Julia Kristeva defined the abject as the material result of bodily waste separated from the body, like vomit, excrement, and blood, which causes simultaneous disgust and intrigue in the subject who experiences it. While the genre of industrial music as a whole often contains explicit references to Kristeva, Georges Bataille, and other philosophers who have written about the abject, Nine Inch Nails was the first to receive worldwide radio and television play without compromising on grotesque imagery, including visuals and lyrics running the gamut from sadomasochistic sex to suicide. This paper probes the public’s hidden desires and fascination with the abject through the band’s most popular single, “Closer,” and how that fascination aided in catapulting the band to stardom. In tandem, I situate the band’s cult following in a countercultural movement that felt abjected–expunged, alienated, sequestered–from the rest of society and how identification with the extreme and disturbing lyrical imagery allowed them to band together as outcasts. Using ethnographic and theoretical methodologies, I explore the abject’s ability to both unify and divide, and how that mirrors its dual nature as alluring and repulsive.