Nine Inch Nails Year Zero CD

On his 2007 full-length studio follow-up to WITH TEETH, Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor steps away from the relatively straight-ahead rock aesthetic of that record, opting instead for an intentionally abrasive sound lined with sharp shards of noise and static. Tied together by an enigmatic, X-FILES-like concept involving an apocalyptic scenario, YEAR ZERO is marked by tell-tale tracks such as "Survivalism," a fierce number that harkens back to THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL, and "In This Twilight," a bleak, distortion-filled song.
Reportedly influenced by the Bomb Squad's spare, hard-hitting production on vintage Public Enemy releases (a point driven home by the stark, stuttering "My Violent Heart"), ZERO also reveals that Reznor picked up a few experimental tricks from tour-mates TV on the Radio, as best exemplified by the guitar squalls of the aforementioned "Survivalism." Less personal and more cinematic than preceding outings, YEAR ZERO is arguably NIN's least-accessible album, and proves that Reznor hasn't abandoned his SPIRAL-era post as a sonic agitator who has infiltrated the mainstream.
Despite its imposing and impossible title, Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D is actually a highly accessible record. That's meant literally. As an addendum to the Nine Inch Nails remix album on disc one, disc two comes on a DVD/CD ROM that features the multi-track masters of all the original tracks, allowing listeners to revise and remix the tracks themselves. Who would have thought Trent Reznor would release the first industrial-pop "Choose Your Own Adventure"-style album?
That remarkable novelty aside, disc one of Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D contains some excellent remixes of tracks from 2007's YEAR ZERO. Not only is the material strong (YEAR ZERO was the best NIN effort in years), but the remixes, which include work from Kronos Quartet, Bill Laswell, the Faint, and Olof Dreijer from the Knife, bring a fresh spin to NIN's music by highlighting its dancey and experimental tendencies.
Nine Inch Nails' 2007 release Year Zero will undoubtedly go down in rock history for the way the recording was marketed before its release. It may mark the first time that the advance strategy -- conceived of and executed, for the most part, by NIN auteur Trent Reznor himself with 42 Entertainment -- became part and parcel of the edifice that is the album's concept: an alternate reality game and a possible film project that lasts three years in total make up the rest. Months before the recording's actual issue date, T-shirts appeared with highlighted letters in code that spelled out "I Am Trying To Believe." Hip fans added a dotcom to the words and found a website discussing "The Presence," a shadowy four-fingered hand on the set's cover that appears throughout the booklet, in web discussions of the set, and references to the drug "Parepin," which was allegedly introduced into the water supplies of large cities to make them safe against bio-terror yet induced mass hallucinations as a side effect. There were other websites as well which described the "Church of Plano," the confessions of a government murderer for hire, and more, as well as a phone number that played the spooky beginning of the track "Survivalism." There were several thumb drives placed strategically in bathrooms of NIN concerts around the world that contained entire tracks from the album. What's more, this guerilla "marketing" campaign has not been commented on by Reznor except to say that it is not marketing, but part of the concept of Year Zero itself and not meant to induce consumers to buy the record. Right.
Given this ambitious schemata for Year Zero's release along with the concept -- a dystopian, paranoid, angry and schizophrenic look at life in the United States circa 2022 -- it is the music contained on the disc and only the music that is the bellwether of whether or not the ambition and effort were worth it. Year Zero comes virtually on the heels of 2005's With Teeth, and is a virtual sprint for RRolling Stone (p.111) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Top Albums of the Year 2007".
Entertainment Weekly (p.61) - "[H]e drives his messages home with the whisper-to-a-scream vocal melodrama and the most chaotically catchy tunes he and his arsenal of machines can generate."
Alternative Press (p.158) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "For YEAR ZERO, Nine Inch Nails chairman Trent Reznor sets his machinery on 'kill' and points it toward authority and herd mentality, dicing up guitars and laptops synths like an Enron paper trail."
Kerrang (Magazine) (p.70) - Ranked #8 in Kerrang's "The Top 20 Albums Of 2007" -- "[A] spectacular, chilling record..."