Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

While listening to Trent Reznor’s new release ‘Year Zero’ it becomes immediately apparent that he’s no longer the screwed up youngster who built ‘pretty hate machine’ and ‘the downward spiral’. Yeah, of course angst still plays a part in his lyrics but the deeply personal confessions have been replaced for a nagging sense of uneasiness with the world. Likewise his layers of religious and biological metaphors have been stripped away revealing some pretty simple words. Particularly annoying is the ‘Capital G’ where he sarcastically sings in the voice of one of Bush’s supporters, but he cranks up the stupidity in his tone so high that the result sounds less like a clever satire and more like a drunken frat boy trying to rap.

Musically this album is a triumph though. On the cover he promises more noise; probably to drown out the critics and fans who claim that Trent has gone soft. Unlike other albums made to pander to the critics (Metallica’s ‘Saint Anger’) this release actually delivers. First of all the maestro takes a step away from the pro-tools and breaks out the power tools. Large clouds of fuzzy distortion washes over most tracks, punctuated by drill bit spikes of sharp noise and desperate midi solo’s from dying laptops. These segments are at their most enjoyable when Trent only whispers over them, since he insists on taking a jarringly mediocre rock and roll approach to most of his vocal duties on this album.

While this CD makes great background noise for my cubicle I am curious as to what the future has in store for Nine Inch Nails. Will this seed of electronic noise grow into another must have album, or has Trent Reznor exhausted all his darkness? I hope that has not happened, it would be terrible if the only thing he has left to complain about is his cholesterol and car insurance premium steadily going up. Either way listen for tracks like ‘The Greater Good’ and ‘Another Version of the Truth’, they are works of art that posses a subtle quality that goes against today’s self indulgent production values.