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View attachment 12972
rate 4/5
The best thing to hit YouTube in the past few weeks is Sad Kermit singing Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." Everybody's favorite Muppet amphibian strums an acoustic guitar, warbling Trent Reznor's classic ballad of self-loathing to a montage of scenes illustrating his degradation: Kermit shooting up, Kermit passed out in a pile of beer cans and pill bottles, Kermit blowing rails off a copy of The God Delusion near a topless photo of Miss Piggy. By the end of the song, Kermit's going down on Rowlf, who brandishes a leather whip. "You can have it all, my empire of dirt," Kermit sings, and you feel his froggy pain. It works because Kermit and Trent aren't so far apart -- they're both sweet and sad and vulnerable, behind a brittle formal pose. On Sad Kermit's MySpace page, he sings an even bleaker NIN song -- "Something I Can Never Have" -- but I don't know if I'm strong enough to take that one.
Reznor brings the pain on Year Zero, his strongest, weirdest and most complex record since The Downward Spiral. On his surprise 2005 comeback, With Teeth, Reznor sounded unsure of himself, sweating for a hit. He front-loaded it with mediocre radio-rock bangers like "The Hand That Feeds," pushing the kinkier material to the second half. But after the success of With Teeth, he's got his bravado back. This time, he's cooked up a concept album about an American police state, fifteen years in the future. To suit the paranoid vibe, Year Zero is dense yet minimal, inspired by the Bomb Squad production on early Public Enemy records. Reznor leaked the tracks onto the Interwebs by leaving them on USB drives in bathroom stalls at his European shows, a very Crying of Lot 49 way to do it.
The target of his rage on Year Zero is "Capital G," and you'll never guess who that stands for. (Hint: "I pushed a button and elected him to office/He pushed a button, and it dropped the bomb.") In Capital G's regime, the military runs the government ("Survivalism") and the church ("God Given"), watching every move you make. The nation keeps a permanent war going, using up soldiers and spitting them out, until they finally rebel in the anthem "Your Violent Heart." As science fiction, Year Zero is nothing special; fifteen years in the future sounds like a fifteen-year-old X-Files rerun, complete with the slogan "I am trying to believe." But just by forcing Reznor to get out of his head and imagine the world beyond his own private Idaho, the concept inspires him musically. "The Beginning of the End" stays on the scene with a "My Sharona" drum hook; "Vessel" is a cosmic sex/drug meltdown ("I let you put it in my mouth/ I let it get under my skin") with a nasty electro-goth disco twitch.
"Me, I'm Not" is his toughest song since "Closer," which it resembles; over a sinister, mechanical death-funk groove, Reznor whispers about dangerous pleasures, pleading, "You've got something I need." (Hey, another X-Files connection.) In songs like "The Good Soldier," "My Violent Heart" and "Meet Your Master," Reznor makes facing up to sobriety sound like a soldier getting over a war, whether he's using militarism as a metaphor for addiction or vice versa. And not since his debut has he sung so much about masters, servants, getting down on your knees, bowing to the one you serve, etc. The density of the mix evokes not just Public Enemy but Pere Ubu, the 1970s Cleveland punk-industrial pioneers who did Datapanik in Year Zero, giving NIN more fruitful musical templates than The Wall ever did. On Year Zero, Reznor doesn't exactly sound like he's having fun -- does he ever? But he runs out of disc space before he runs out of ideas, and it's the first time that's happened in quite a while.
By ROB SHEFFIELD (Rollingstone)
From amazon:
Editorial review:
Nine Inch Nails' sixth studio release, Year Zero takes the concept album further than it may have ever gone before. In advance of its release, URLs were hidden in tour t-shirts, music- and image-filled USB drives were 'found' at concerts, and dozens of websites have been packed with conspiracy stories that all involve the year 2022 or 'Year Zero.' Each clue is part of a cohesive whole, requiring a listener to follow an exhaustive web trail to grasp the entire tale. Focusing specifically on the music, "The Beginning of the End," the powerful first vocal track, is like the sonic and lyrical equivalent of an emotional ascension to a rollercoaster's peak, with the last few cacophonic seconds equaling the fall of individual freedoms. "Survivalism," Year Zero's first single, follows with guest vocalist/Slam artist Saul Williams pumping up the passion in its urgent chorus. While still industrial in genre, it's clear that Trent Reznor's musical evolution finds him bringing more mellow songs to the mix than he has on previous discs ("The Good Soldier," "The Greater Good," "In This Twilight") as well as an increased number of funk-affected rhythms, specifically in standout tracks "Capitol G" and "Me, I'm Not." Devotees of NIN's harder sound will appreciate the metallic crunch of "My Violent Heart" and "Meet Your Master." On the whole, the Nine Inch Nails we hear on Year Zero is less focused on producing heavy music and more focused on delivering its heavy, conspiratorial doomsday message. --Denise Sheppard
From the Artist:
This record began as an experiment with noise on a laptop in a bus on tour somewhere. That sound led to a daydream about the end of the world. That daydream stuck with me and over time revealed itself to be much more. I believe sometimes you have a choice in what inspiration you choose to follow and other times you really don't. This record is the latter. Once I tuned into it, everything fell into place... as if it were meant to be. With a framework established, the songs were very easy to write. Things started happening in my "real" life that blurred the lines of what was fiction and what wasn't. The record turned out to be more than a just a record in scale, as you will see over time.
Part one is year zero. Concept record. Sixteen tracks. All written and performed by me, produced / programmed by me and Atticus Ross, mixed by Alan Moulder, mastered by Brian "Big Bass" Gardner. Release date: April 17, 2007.
What's it about? Well, it takes place about fifteen years in the future. Things are not good. If you imagine a world where greed and power continue to run their likely course, you'll have an idea of the backdrop. The world has reached the breaking point - politically, spiritually and ecologically. Written from various perspectives of people in this world, "year zero" examines various viewpoints set against an impending moment of truth. How does it sound? You will hear for yourself soon enough, but given the point of this document is to provide information...
This record is much more of a "sound collage" than recent efforts from me.
A lot of it was improvised. It is very tedious describing your own music. It's not just music. It's probably too long, but it felt like the right thing to do to paint the complete picture. It will sound different after a few listens. You can think about it and it will reveal more than you were expecting. You can dance to a lot of it. You can f*** to a lot of it (maybe all of it depending on what you're into).
Track Listings
1. Hyperpower!
2. The Beginning Of The End
3. Survivalism
4. The Good Soldier
5. Vessel
6. Me, I'm Not
7. Capital G
8. My Violent Heart
9. The Warning
10. God Given
11. Meet Your Master
12. The Greater Good
13. The Great Destroyer
14. Another Version Of The Truth
15. In This Twilight
16. Zero-Sum
rate 4/5
The best thing to hit YouTube in the past few weeks is Sad Kermit singing Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." Everybody's favorite Muppet amphibian strums an acoustic guitar, warbling Trent Reznor's classic ballad of self-loathing to a montage of scenes illustrating his degradation: Kermit shooting up, Kermit passed out in a pile of beer cans and pill bottles, Kermit blowing rails off a copy of The God Delusion near a topless photo of Miss Piggy. By the end of the song, Kermit's going down on Rowlf, who brandishes a leather whip. "You can have it all, my empire of dirt," Kermit sings, and you feel his froggy pain. It works because Kermit and Trent aren't so far apart -- they're both sweet and sad and vulnerable, behind a brittle formal pose. On Sad Kermit's MySpace page, he sings an even bleaker NIN song -- "Something I Can Never Have" -- but I don't know if I'm strong enough to take that one.
Reznor brings the pain on Year Zero, his strongest, weirdest and most complex record since The Downward Spiral. On his surprise 2005 comeback, With Teeth, Reznor sounded unsure of himself, sweating for a hit. He front-loaded it with mediocre radio-rock bangers like "The Hand That Feeds," pushing the kinkier material to the second half. But after the success of With Teeth, he's got his bravado back. This time, he's cooked up a concept album about an American police state, fifteen years in the future. To suit the paranoid vibe, Year Zero is dense yet minimal, inspired by the Bomb Squad production on early Public Enemy records. Reznor leaked the tracks onto the Interwebs by leaving them on USB drives in bathroom stalls at his European shows, a very Crying of Lot 49 way to do it.
The target of his rage on Year Zero is "Capital G," and you'll never guess who that stands for. (Hint: "I pushed a button and elected him to office/He pushed a button, and it dropped the bomb.") In Capital G's regime, the military runs the government ("Survivalism") and the church ("God Given"), watching every move you make. The nation keeps a permanent war going, using up soldiers and spitting them out, until they finally rebel in the anthem "Your Violent Heart." As science fiction, Year Zero is nothing special; fifteen years in the future sounds like a fifteen-year-old X-Files rerun, complete with the slogan "I am trying to believe." But just by forcing Reznor to get out of his head and imagine the world beyond his own private Idaho, the concept inspires him musically. "The Beginning of the End" stays on the scene with a "My Sharona" drum hook; "Vessel" is a cosmic sex/drug meltdown ("I let you put it in my mouth/ I let it get under my skin") with a nasty electro-goth disco twitch.
"Me, I'm Not" is his toughest song since "Closer," which it resembles; over a sinister, mechanical death-funk groove, Reznor whispers about dangerous pleasures, pleading, "You've got something I need." (Hey, another X-Files connection.) In songs like "The Good Soldier," "My Violent Heart" and "Meet Your Master," Reznor makes facing up to sobriety sound like a soldier getting over a war, whether he's using militarism as a metaphor for addiction or vice versa. And not since his debut has he sung so much about masters, servants, getting down on your knees, bowing to the one you serve, etc. The density of the mix evokes not just Public Enemy but Pere Ubu, the 1970s Cleveland punk-industrial pioneers who did Datapanik in Year Zero, giving NIN more fruitful musical templates than The Wall ever did. On Year Zero, Reznor doesn't exactly sound like he's having fun -- does he ever? But he runs out of disc space before he runs out of ideas, and it's the first time that's happened in quite a while.
By ROB SHEFFIELD (Rollingstone)
From amazon:
Editorial review:
Nine Inch Nails' sixth studio release, Year Zero takes the concept album further than it may have ever gone before. In advance of its release, URLs were hidden in tour t-shirts, music- and image-filled USB drives were 'found' at concerts, and dozens of websites have been packed with conspiracy stories that all involve the year 2022 or 'Year Zero.' Each clue is part of a cohesive whole, requiring a listener to follow an exhaustive web trail to grasp the entire tale. Focusing specifically on the music, "The Beginning of the End," the powerful first vocal track, is like the sonic and lyrical equivalent of an emotional ascension to a rollercoaster's peak, with the last few cacophonic seconds equaling the fall of individual freedoms. "Survivalism," Year Zero's first single, follows with guest vocalist/Slam artist Saul Williams pumping up the passion in its urgent chorus. While still industrial in genre, it's clear that Trent Reznor's musical evolution finds him bringing more mellow songs to the mix than he has on previous discs ("The Good Soldier," "The Greater Good," "In This Twilight") as well as an increased number of funk-affected rhythms, specifically in standout tracks "Capitol G" and "Me, I'm Not." Devotees of NIN's harder sound will appreciate the metallic crunch of "My Violent Heart" and "Meet Your Master." On the whole, the Nine Inch Nails we hear on Year Zero is less focused on producing heavy music and more focused on delivering its heavy, conspiratorial doomsday message. --Denise Sheppard
From the Artist:
This record began as an experiment with noise on a laptop in a bus on tour somewhere. That sound led to a daydream about the end of the world. That daydream stuck with me and over time revealed itself to be much more. I believe sometimes you have a choice in what inspiration you choose to follow and other times you really don't. This record is the latter. Once I tuned into it, everything fell into place... as if it were meant to be. With a framework established, the songs were very easy to write. Things started happening in my "real" life that blurred the lines of what was fiction and what wasn't. The record turned out to be more than a just a record in scale, as you will see over time.
Part one is year zero. Concept record. Sixteen tracks. All written and performed by me, produced / programmed by me and Atticus Ross, mixed by Alan Moulder, mastered by Brian "Big Bass" Gardner. Release date: April 17, 2007.
What's it about? Well, it takes place about fifteen years in the future. Things are not good. If you imagine a world where greed and power continue to run their likely course, you'll have an idea of the backdrop. The world has reached the breaking point - politically, spiritually and ecologically. Written from various perspectives of people in this world, "year zero" examines various viewpoints set against an impending moment of truth. How does it sound? You will hear for yourself soon enough, but given the point of this document is to provide information...
This record is much more of a "sound collage" than recent efforts from me.
A lot of it was improvised. It is very tedious describing your own music. It's not just music. It's probably too long, but it felt like the right thing to do to paint the complete picture. It will sound different after a few listens. You can think about it and it will reveal more than you were expecting. You can dance to a lot of it. You can f*** to a lot of it (maybe all of it depending on what you're into).
Track Listings
1. Hyperpower!
2. The Beginning Of The End
3. Survivalism
4. The Good Soldier
5. Vessel
6. Me, I'm Not
7. Capital G
8. My Violent Heart
9. The Warning
10. God Given
11. Meet Your Master
12. The Greater Good
13. The Great Destroyer
14. Another Version Of The Truth
15. In This Twilight
16. Zero-Sum