NIN releases dystopian concept album

Point-blank lyrics intensify political feel of album

By Joey Vergara

Published April 17, 2007

Eighteen years into the game, Trent Reznor is still as pissed off as ever, and the music world is better off for it.

Nine Inch Nails' newest album, Year Zero, lies somewhere between 2005's disappointing and ironically tame With Teeth and 1999's remarkable double album, The Fragile. Reznor, comfortable as ever bringing his palatable brand of industrial rock to the masses, masterfully blends straight rock with throbbing electronic drums, gruesomely distorted guitars and piercing synths.

Reportedly a concept album based on a dystopian glimpse at what the world might look like in 15 years, Year Zero is Nine Inch Nail's most overtly political album. "Capital G" skewers global warming, broken ideals and George Bush ("I pushed a button and elected him to office and/ He pushed a button and dropped a bomb"). Reznor's lyrics are still sarcastic and seething, and his vocal delivery is as smug as it has been in the past. But with point-blank lyrics like these, Year Zero doesn't need the screaming of Pretty Hate Machine or The Downward Spiral.

Instrumental opener "Hyperpower!" barely fits in with the rest of Year Zero's material, but it somehow manages to begin the album on a good note, even with all its clichés: crowd cheers, layered instrumentation and a cascading wall of sounds. Studio drummer Josh Freese (of The Vandals and A Perfect Circle) gives the track just what it needs with his distinctive style to keep it from being filler.

Beyond the familiarities with previous albums, Year Zero shows Reznor's progression as a songwriter and Nine Inch Nails' mastermind producer. Even the most straightforward songs (the lead single, "Survivalism," and "In This Twilight") sound ridiculously complicated and, as always, well produced. "The Beginning of the End," including Queen-like drums and all, is stadium-rock brilliance like The Fragile's "We're in This Together."

"Vessel," easily one of the album's best tracks, builds itself around a pulsing electrical surge that plays throughout. Reznor toys with twitchy guitar lines and multiple vocal tracks.

It's really a shame when a band with so much going for it in the lyrical department chooses to drop the vocals. Instrumental tracks including "Another Version of the Truth," drenched in fuzz for the first two minutes, and "The Greater Good," which ends up sounding like a bad industrial version of "The Whisper Song," just come off as incomplete.

"Zero-Sum" is the best way Year Zero could end. It's grim ("Shame on us for all we have done") and desolate. In other words, it's distinctively Nine Inch Nails.

Based solely on the music, it is somewhat surprising how well-received Reznor and company has been. By all means, Nine Inch Nails' music belongs in alleyways and gutters: It's dark, grimy and at times even shocking (i.e. "Closer"). Reznor's ability to make such digitized and mechanical music personal through amazing songwriting and innovative production makes NIN so appealing. Year Zero takes the band's chief strengths to the fullest, making it instantly mysterious and powerfully relevant.