Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Nine Inch Nails, ‘The Year Zero’ 28/5/07 Fans of NIN may well be surprised that another album has surfaced so soon after ‘With Teeth’, it is only Trent Reznor’s bands’ fifth album of 19 years recording. A concept album, it is his vision of the USA in 15 year’s time and what a journey it is. From the insane wailings of opening track ‘Hyperpower!’, some almost Killers’ esque synthesizers for ‘Meet Your Master’ on to some unprecedented free-styling on ‘God Given’ the disc gradually takes you on a diverse musical expedition. This is making an album how it should be done- every track loops beautifully into each-other, the production and instrumental repertoire is first-class. Typically Reznor is on blistering vocal form- ‘Survivalism’, the closest thing you will ever get to an audio mugging, the venom that drips off every word of ‘My Violent Heart’ and the harmonious tranquillity of ‘In This Twilight’. Each track really does tell its own story and the future feel and sense of armageddon of the record is personified to perfection. If a concept album can stir up this many online stories and conspiracy theories, it gives you an idea of how good it must be. It’s true that stand-out quality has been abandoned in favour of consistency but this has still made for a formidable sixteen tracks of an anarchistic Nine Inch Nails assault on the future of the free world. Orwell would have been proud of them. 9/10 CM Text Box: Links and affiliates Contact Me