Year Zero

Year Zero:unexpected turn of Nine Inch Nails's art

A fevered imagination and the world of gloomy fantasies of Mr. Trent Reznor attract music lovers' attention all over the world for 18 years already. It was Nine Inch Nails or to be more exact the only and irreplaceable person who stands behind this name who made an outstanding contribution to push heavy industrial into mainstream and spread it all across the globe. Being the only author of Nine Inch Nail's songs Trent Renzor was carrying on the affairs quite leisurely, he released five albums since 1989 up to 2005, but this couldn't prevent the audience from awarding him with all possible honorable titles and recognitions of his talents. However, even at the times of the longest breaks between the albums Nine Inch Nails never fell out of audience's attention releasing numerous collections and live records. This has settled a specific attitude to this band, Nine Inch Nails became something you take for granted and there was nothing that could point to abrupt splash of Reznor's songwriting activity, but this attitude proved to be wrong. Only two years after his recent album of 2005 With Teeth issue Nine Inch Nails announced a release of a new and the first in the band's history conceptual album called Year Zero that is going to receive a continuation in the following year.    

A mosaic character of Year Zero

Year Zero can't be called an album in a common sense of this word, to say the least of it. More likely it is a new, multilevel, artistic form of personal ideas expression. In this respect one may compare Year Zero with complex conceptual structures of Pink Floyd's The Wall or The Who's Quadrophenia. Overall, the album's visible subject matter is dedicated to near future and those things that expect us there, to concretize – government's total control of thoughts, religious zealots, raging terrorism and things like that are expressed in the most alienating forms. The album's underlying message is quite ambiguous and evokes mixed feelings, each person can behold or not behold these or those subtle points. But Resnor didn't stint himself with album's musical part - he involved modern technologies and PR tools to make the whole picture of total conspiracy and dark mysticism even deeper. It all started when Nine Inch Nails began selling tour T-shirts with a phrase "iamtryingtobelieve" printed on the backsides. It's not so hard to suppose that after adding .com to it we'll get a domain of a certain web site. It turned out to be the first tile of a mosaic that Resnor offers to inlay. The site contained some information about a drug that US government adds into drinking water to control the minds of citizens. If you'll try to send an e-mail to the site's owner you'll receive a typical answer where the author agrees that he was wrong about government's intentions and recommends to drink water. After that another web addresses connected with Year Zero concept in this way or another began to appear here and there. Besides all this Nine Inch Nails were "accidentally" leaving USB hard drives containing some songs from the new album in toilets and other places accessible for fans during their European tour, thus assisting spreading new song in the Internet. Ironically, The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) paid its attention to it trying to resist posting and further spreading of these tracks.  

Trent Reznor advocates his classic sound

Well, as far as the scope of this article can't hold all the nuances of Year Zero concept anyway it is time to talk about music itself, the more so because Reznor count on the independent research of his ideas. Mostly, Reznor came back to the boarders of the style and the sound he used to advocate in early 90's. There are lots of electronic samples, beats, noises and overtones, overall it creates quite dimensional and dark image - track Vessel will be great to exemplify this. Many songs here possess a peculiar funky spirit, for instance The Warning or My Violent Heart. Year Zero is probably one of the most emotional records of Reznor, if somebody thinks that Reznor lost his bite and flair on With Teeth than he shouldn't get worried this time around, Reznor works at full capacity. He never was scared that his works might alienate someone and this album is no exception, he doesn't make a trade-off. Probably the album lacks diversity, the second part of the album just can't stop reminding you something, but the album's concept and general atmosphere compensate it. The album is really dark and chill. Year Zero is very ambiguous record, someone might open Nine Inch Nails for himself again, for someone it might be a disappointment but the obvious fact about this album remains the same – it won't pass unnoticed and will stay in the center of attention for a long time.