»5th May 2007

Music Review: Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

This is the review which I managed to get into the Student Paper thanks to the inside help of Mark. I might at some point do a more elaborate and improved review similar to the one for Christ Illusion.


For Nine Inch Nails fans, waiting five years for a new album isn’t out of the ordinary. That Nine Inch Nail’s front man and driving force, Trent Reznor, has managed to knock out two albums within two years of each other (the last one being 2005’s With Teeth) is nigh on a miracle. Year Zero is the band’s sixth full-length album and marks a return to the synth driven, noise-ridden tracks of The Downward Spiral but it is also a departure in that it is the first true concept album from the band. The album describes a believable near future, totalitarian America where all civil liberties have been cast aside and the country is run as a police state.
Year Zero is a departure from the previous album With Teeth. Instead of being an angst-filled exorcism of Reznor’s drug addiction and rehab, Year Zero is a highly politicised and far angrier record.
Familiar motifs and recurring themes pop up in Year Zero as much as any NIN album, but the fact this is a concept album gives the record a different feel. With less emphasis on personal and emotional trauma and with a more politicised content, Reznor is showing that he is not content to merely tread water.
The oddly titled first song ‘Hyperpower!’ is a crescendo of noise and heavy guitar riffing and opens the way for a succession of NIN classics. Track three, ‘Survivalism’—the first single from the album—is a dissonant and noisy affair, perhaps the closest comparison would be to some of the more electronic moments on Further Down the Spiral. Another likely candidate for a single, ‘Capital G’ is in the bracket of instant classic, a half speed, bleeping and whirring broadside against complacency and idiocy in American politics. Other songs such as ‘The Greater Good’ drift away from the industrial sound more into the realms of trip-hop and the electro work of Mr Oizo. The final song ‘Zero Sum’ is delightfully bleak, offering only a slither of redemption for the story the album tells.
Throughout the album, monosynth bass lines rumble along with distorted drum machines whilst wailing, dissonant guitars seep through the computer bleeps and samples. Never descending into self-indulgence, the record is tight and kept on track by Reznor’s pop sensibility, making Year Zero a lean, mean, hate-filled machine of an album, which is exactly what it should be.

(8/10)

A few points to clear up, the bare bones for that review were done with only listening to the Survivalism single and keeping reasonably up to date on the Alternate Reality Game promoting Year Zero. Secondly, the music eds made the bizarre choice of using the photo of Trent from the inside cover of With Teeth for the review. I couldn't find that photo online so I just used the album cover for Year Zero, which makes more sense. Finally, so as not to appear like a complete fan boy and possibly get the chance of doing some more reviews for the paper (which sadly never happened as the music eds are a pair of reactionary indie fuckers who can't handle REAL music and REAL journalism like you see before you now :D) I only gave the album 8/10. Not constrained by the limitations of trying to look intelligent here I will reveal the TRUE SCORE to be 11/10.


Extar, over, out.

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