Nine Inch Nails
Year Zero

This album is the confirmation that our esteemed Trent Reznor has always been a pop music writer in disguise.

He remains a musician of great stature, worthy of the highest pages of rock, but listening to this album, not to mention the previous "With Teeth," there is a clear perception that Reznor has done everything possible to make it radio-friendly in numerous passages, inflating and pumping up the sound to the extreme and dressing it with countless glitches and clangs.

The album unfortunately promises a lot in the beginning: the noise ride "Hyperpower" makes you hope for a return to the sounds of 'Broken,' yet already on the second track "The Beginning of The End" everything returns to that FM rock landscape that had already made many despair at the reckless direction taken by the artist.

Trent Reznor remains an author of great songs with immediate appeal, which captivate you both for the simplicity of writing and for the baroque nature of the arrangements and sought-after sounds, but faced with trivialities like "Capital G," where Reznor plays at rapping over an incredibly repetitive beat leading nowhere with an inconsistent track, one really wonders where the author of "March of The Pigs" or "Closer" has gone. The single "Survivalism" is a harmless track that wants to ooze energy and "angst" but leaves you rather indifferent already at the second listen.

It is good and right to grow and historicize one's demons, as well as to mature one's sound in a more adult and aware direction, but our hero has never made a daring turn towards radically "different" sounds; deep down, Reznor has continued to propose the same material as "Pretty Hate Machine" by dressing it in up-to-date attire, but not betraying the original idea. Of course, "Zero Sum" or "In This Twilight" surprise you for the way the voice rises from the vortex of endless noises, for the imagination in mixing such heterogeneous elements; but everything ends too quickly, and in a few minutes, the song already becomes a faded memory, unable to leave an indelible mark on the emotions.

I remain a great fan of the Nine Inch Nails project and I believe I will add this album to my collection, aware of nurturing an already wealthy artist who has lost along the way the sick and creative vein that made us love him.