The concept album can be a great thing. Examples are plentiful and amazing: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; The Who’s Tommy; Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On; David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars; Styx’s Kilroy Was Here; Black Flag’s Damaged; Prince’s Purple Rain; Deltron 3030’s self-titled album; the list could go on forever.
And once, in 1994, Trent Reznor turned the concept album on its head when he showed the entire world his Downward Spiral into drug abuse, isolation and self-destruction. The album set the cornerstone for the industrial-prog rock scene, paved the way for acts like Marilyn Manson (Reznor’s personal protégé) and established the brooding Reznor as alt-rock’s resident Prince of Darkness.
But with Reznor’s latest, Year Zero, his long list of enjoyably intense albums has come to an end. Instead of living up to its intriguing idea – in the year 2022, the United States finds itself a dystopian society with an oppressive government and sedated citizens? Yes, please! – Reznor’s sixth studio release doesn’t deliver much more than monotonous, repetitively primitive industrial tracks that fail to use Reznor’s unique skills as a singer, songwriter and musician.
There are good songs on Year Zero, but they are overshadowed by a majority of tracks that try too hard and don’t live up to their full potential. Nine Inch Nails fans will still be delighted because the core anger that makes Reznor who he is remains – it’s just not implemented in the best way.
The album especially lacks the soaring soundscapes Reznor created in his earlier albums. Sure, The Downward Spiral was released over 10 years ago, but the album was a perfect example of everything Reznor has come to stand for: “Closer” will forever live on as the dirtiest, best song broadcast radio has ever – and probably will ever – play, and “Hurt” was wonderfully depressing on its own and ascended to a whole new level with the Johnny Cash cover.
And while nothing can live up to The Downward Spiral, the album is a perfect example of what Year Zero could have strived to be: Complex, multi-layered, dark, tortured and a glance into Reznor’s complicated, convoluted mind. Instead, the songs come one after another, never fully coming into their own either as individual tracks or a cohesive set. Some of the 16 songs are good, some are passable, and some are just plain lame; for as much as some critics tore apart The Fragile or With Teeth, at least neither of them had this many busted tracks.
The album begins with the almost two-minute long “HYPERPOWER!,” a bass- and synthesizer-laden track reminiscent of The Fragile’s “Just Like You Imagined” (you’ve heard the latter if you’ve watched the trailer for 300; the Nine Inch Nails track served as the background music for nearly all of 300’s promotional spots).
Though the song starts the album off sinister and slow-building – complete with Reznor’s screeching singing style and pained grunts/screams/whatever you call that specific sound – the majority of Year Zero swiftly becomes one-dimensional. “The Beginning of the End” is barely three minutes long, but the only highlight of the track is the ear-bleeding feedback featured about 20 seconds before the song ends.
“Capital G” has a similar effect; despite scathing lyrics against a target that could be either religious or political (“Well I used to stand for something/ Now I’m on my hands and knees/ Traded in my God for this one/ He signs his name with a capital G”), the song’s production seems too expected and offers vocals from Reznor that stress the flaws in his scream-heavy voice.
But the greatest flaws in Year Zero come toward the end, with tracks like “Meet Your Master,” “The Greater Good” and “The Great Destroyer.” The three flow into one another, but not in a good way; they fail to stand on their own and simply become a redundant, nearly 13-minute mess.
Yet when Reznor steps it up on Year Zero, he creates some damn good nuggets of tortured industrial-ness. “Survivalism,” the album’s first single, is a catchy 4 minutes and 24 seconds of Reznor at his Bush-administration-hating best, with lyrics such as “I got my propaganda, I got revisionism/ I got my violence in high-def ultra-realism/ All a part of this great nation/ I got my fist, I got my plan, I got survivalism.” It doesn’t hurt that the socially conscious hip-hop icon Saul Williams provides back-up vocals on the track (the cool kids club is completed by Zack de la Rocha, who collaborated with Williams on the track “Act III Scene 2 [Shakespeare]” off the latter’s self-titled 2004 album, and who Reznor thanks in Year Zero’s liner notes).
“Good Soldier” continues along the same vein, as Reznor questions the validity of the war in Iraq (he never states the conflict by name, but it’s easy to infer his subject matter, considering the point of the album). “There’s nowhere left to hide/ ‘Cause God is on our side/ I keep telling myself/ I am trying to see/ I am trying to believe/ This is not where I should be,” Reznor sings.
But the album’s shining moments are with “Me, I’m Not” and “My Violent Heart.” The nearly five-minute “Me, I’m Not” begins with a slow-paced, layered intro that segues into Reznor’s creepy, whispered vocals about how he can “swallow it down/ Keep it all inside/ I define myself/ By how well I hide.” Ah, the sinister Reznor we all know and love. The gloriousness of the Prince of Darkness continues with “My Violent Heart,” in which Reznor proclaims, “You and I may look the same/ But we are very far apart/ There’s bullet holes where my compassion used to be/ And there is violence in my heart.”
The mastermind behind Nine Inch Nails is best when he’s righteously angry, and Year Zero could have been so much more if Reznor had just capitalized on the same techniques that made his previous concept album, The Downward Spiral, live on forever in pop-culture reverence. But while the album isn’t Reznor’s greatest, it is still a deliciously rage-filled slice of Reznor’s hatred of everything our administration and society have to offer. Nine Inch Nails fans probably wouldn’t want it any other way.
Contact reporter Roxana Hadadi at
roxanadbk@gmail.com.
