Nine Inch Nails
Year Zero

THE REVIEW

Finally, I have found the worthy successor to The Downward Spiral, the worldwide masterpiece by Mr. Reznor and also his artistic apotheosis. Is it important to try to surpass it? Not at all, it is much more reasonable to just continue making good records that can hopefully stand on their own. Something that, for me, did not happen - I'm ready for the insults - with The Fragile, a grand sea of ideas and contents worthy of great respect, but too similar to TDS: that dialogue has already been done, and at its peak expression, you risk redundancy. Even less impacted by With Teeth, which I will skip with an agile somersault, but I had not reckoned with Year Zero, a 2007 album that made me plant my feet on the ground and raise my antennas. This is where things make sense. Similarly to Spiral, it is a concept album, this time based on a dystopian future world not too far away, rich with dark and fascinating political texts. Yes ok, but how is the album? Beautiful, damn beautiful.

It seems that Trent Reznor, I'm open to debates with NIN experts, wanted to revisit and expand the architectures of his beautiful Closer, that is, those of a dark industrial electronic, still strongly sui generis, with an attentive eye to the dancefloor, polished pop music and a bit of trendy. An almost impossible balance, one that many would crave, and which seems somewhat to be the leitmotif of this Year Zero. As a result, the album is surprisingly accessible, almost all tracks have a fairly defined refrain and a sufficient dose of catchiness, this is particularly felt in songs like The Good Soldier, where a remarkable melodic search also dominates, Capital G, which somewhat mocks too much Marylin Manson both in its martial progression and background screams, and My Violent Heart, where the musician lays his cards too bare, exposing himself to a certain dose of gaudiness. Vessel instead hits a genius refrain, which vaguely reminded me of Whatever it is by Mauro Pagani (the soundtrack of Salvatores' Nirvana), surely a coincidence, but who knows, considering Reznor's collaboration with Italians (Cortini), anything is possible.

Continuing the review of a fairly long album, I want to mention the poppy God Given, not only for its provocative text (fundamentalism?), but for the truly fantastic arrangement, kaleidoscopic yet accessible electronics, with a splendid groove and drum machine that make you tap your foot joyfully. Also here, expect a very catchy refrain, ironically introduced by Reznor himself with the equivalent of a "everyone on the dance floor!" I really appreciated the arrangement part, so much that I would have preferred delving deeper into the instrumental part. What can I say? Well done my rebellious and genius guy, even though no longer so young. Maybe this is one of the driving forces of the album, Year Zero explores territories similar to TDS, but almost everything has changed, there is no longer youthful anger, instability, anguish, all replaced by a surgical and controlled impassiveness in looking at facts from an external, alien position. Among all these delightful tracks, we find various electronic experiments surely burst from the latest DAW on Reznor's laptop, but the results are far superior to many youngsters in the scene: beautiful the distortions of The Beginning of the End (but is the base My Sharona?) and in the final minutes of The Great Destroyer. Still noteworthy is the meticulousness in sound choice and the precision in placing them to communicate a precise stylistic coherence, in this case, the theme is distant distorted sirens (of war?). All tracks flow smoothly, and toward the end, in pure Nine Inch Nails style, we witness the overtaking of more instrumental-cinematic atmospheres, but this does not stop Reznor from inserting two great pieces, In This Twilight and Zero Sum, the latter perhaps the precursor of the work that will later be done for The Social Network, still beautiful, and great refrain.

In short, Year Zero is truly a great album, beware of reviews that trash it, but also of the ones giving it merely passable ratings, and do not seek a new Spiral, but rather a rock-pop-industrial listening (yes, labels suck), in a tie, while you reminisce about your youthful adventures.