21 November 2008 :: Fortunately, Buckethead.

:: Record Review

Nine Inch Nails

Year Zero
(Nothing; 2007)

Rating: 56%

In angry 1989 an angry young prophet revealed with his angry Pretty Hate Machine the true nature of the world: that it is a cold and inhospitable place, with a choir of industrial musicians for every perverted church and Doc Martens on every pair of feet. It's been almost twenty years since, and during that time the young man stayed on message, each subsequent (if infrequent) statement reasserting the same stylized gloom, eventually leading some to believe there was little to his doomsaying but a world of unending insularity and manic-depressive egomania. To make matters worse, he left Bizkits and Godsmacks in his wake, and it began to seem as if all hope truly was lost. But Reznor then returned, reemerged to guide us to this, his most profound epiphany: there are reasons why the world is cold and inhospitable! And, apparently, there's a war on?

The loose concept of Year Zero is a speculation on what it will be like to be an American in the album's dystopian alternate future of 2022. There are numerous and obvious gaps to Reznor's allegory (the problems in this future US are without variation the exact same problems faced today, and George W. Bush is called out for his hypocrisy though it's supposedly fifteen years after he's left office), but no matter. Battered US soldiers still look at their bloody hands with dawning horror ("The Good Soldier"), Americans still feel unjustifiably entitled ("God Given"), and propaganda rules. The problem is that, fundamentally, Year Zero isn't detailed or thoughtful enough to be called Orwellian, and if the problems it looks at are today's problems, why is it hiding behind a clumsy allegory, pouring most of its creativity into an intricately detailed viral marketing campaign instead of simply committing to honest to god commentary? The fiction at work doesn't have enough depth or originality to suspend our disbelief for even a second.

For a man who's usually about five years between recordings it's strange that his most ambitious album (thematically, at least) should come just two years after the neutered With Teeth (2005). Year Zero does sound fresher and more energized for the impulses with which it was written, but Reznor's concept might have benefited from the extra time he usually takes. On one hand, the album sounds dirtier, even if it is a calculated dirt, and a massive departure from his last release of any significance, the glacial sea change of The Fragile (1999). It's the first time in a long while that Reznor doesn't end up sounding like a grunge anachronism.

"The Good Soldier" and "Vessel" are economical and actually pretty funky; "Me, I'm Not" is easily the best song on the album, the kind of restrained songwriting one would expect from a vet; and "My Violent Heart" sounds like the first genuinely new thing he's done in years. On the other hand, the haunting trip-hop of "The Greater Good" is stilted by rote beats (Reznor, usually adept behind the kit, litters the album with strangely uninspired beats) and "Meet Your Master" flies apart from its surplus of ideas, gimmicky production and inability to cohere. Year Zero gives us a reinvigoration of sorts, but it comes under the flag of a slapdash concept draped lazily over an inconsistent album. Reznor sounds positively enthusiastic to be making music again, but he's allowed that enthusiasm at the expense of his usually suffocating anal-retentive side, and with it, his ability to self-edit, to know when to return to the drawing board.

Any analysis of NIN's lyrics is still the true zero sum game (the first line of the whole album is "Down on your knees..."), but Year Zero is about broad gestures, an intentional glaze over the details. The central idea we are meant to come back to again and again is that the America Reznor sees today could be tomorrow's empty, commercial sci-fi backdrop, and it might be the first time Reznor has departed from the miasma of his own ego, his own black hole of insecurities. His approach has shifted from self-portrait of the tortured artist to positing a world inhabited by people as angry and depressed as he. He just lacks the lyrical acumen to do it right.

"Capital G" is the most surprising -- a direct dig at Bush Jr., Reznor opens with "I pushed a button and elected him to office / and he pushed a button and a-dropped a bomb / you pushed a button and can watch it on the television / those motherfuckers didn't last too long," then "I'm sick of hearin' about the haves and the haves not / have some personal accountability." It's lunky political commentary, late and facile ("Bush and God's name start with the same letter! Next song!") and Reznor shouldn't need some comic book theme about a not-too-distant future to speak the obvious. While singing with anger about something (rather than about being angry) transforms him from a flailing man-boy to, if only for the briefest of moments, the prophetic early nineties pessimist we once loved, it's too bad that it comes when popular political opinion has shifted markedly. It doesn't take veiled artistic statements to reveal that, yeah, a president with a 30% approval rating might be terrible at his job.

I'd like to think that the most thematic and allegorical thing on the record is the instrumental "Another Version of the Truth," a slow beauty, like The Fragile's "La Mer." Reznor takes a short respite from his counter-rhetoric to present us with, well, another version of the truth: music without imposition. Beautiful, unadorned and uncomplicated, Reznor may have unintentionally presented us with a more interesting alternate future than the one to which Year Zero as a whole prescribes, one in which the stultifying nature of rhetoric is negated. "Another Version of the Truth" refrains from saying anything, and by doing so disallows co-optation, transcending otherwise inescapable harsh realities.

It should also be said that, as flawed as it is, there's little reason to hate the album. At his core Reznor is still a geek producer (when asked by a reporter to describe Year Zero, he replied "Fucking cool"), and his semi-isolated view of the world allows him to indulge his inner geek further. Year Zero the album is a slight step up for an artist in long decline, but Year Zero the product line features a number of neat-o things that, like the narrative, have little connection with the music therein. (The CD's "Thermo-chrome" face changes from black to white as it gets hotter, revealing the copyright notice and a series of zeroes and ones which, when translated, provides a URL: the catalyst for a fanboy easter egg hunt.) There are layers of participation on which listeners may unwittingly find themselves, including film projects and alternate reality games, hidden flash drives and cryptic t-shirts. That the marketing push for Year Zero will still be interesting long after you've stopped listening to the music is telling.

Year Zero massively benefits from lowered expectations. Reznor channels his anger, focuses it and takes a much-needed breather from his tried-and-true formula of nihilism and the question of self-destruction, but at its core the album has very little to teach us or anything original to say. His seemingly hopeless inability to write lyrics and the convoluted way he goes about "telling it like it is" once again keeps NIN's music from moving past its own bad clichés. Still, there's little denying that this version of Reznor is more fun, and certainly more engaged. Let's hope his new release schedule allows his next political album to be a little more timely. Conrad Amenta :: 24 April 2007 |                

:: All content © CMG 2003-2008 | :: About | :: Staff | :: Contact | :: Advertise | :: Promos | :: Donate | :: Apply                                                     powered by Textpattern | hosted by (mt) Media Temple