Review: Nine Inch Nails

Review: Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails 'Year Zero': Aidin Vaziri | To get people interested in the new Nine Inch Nails album, Trent Reznor led an Internet scavenger hunt, complete with clandestine Web sites and hidden messages on European tour T-shirts. He scattered a bunch of USB drives loaded with static, MP3 files and hidden phone numbers in public toilets around Germany. He even obliquely sketched out the future for his fans, projecting a virtual world where the government poisons its citizens, secret militias terrorize private homes and other similarly fun stuff happens. On the frayed new single "Survivalism," the rippled goth overlord snarls: "I got my propaganda/ I got revisionism/ I got my violence/ In hi-def ultra realism/ All a part of this great nation." But you have to cut through all the "World of Warcraft" nonsense to really get inside "Year Zero." At 41, Reznor has survived a heroin overdose and a stint in rehab. Now he's really paranoid. But as much as it is a dark, depraved concept album about the state of the world, "Year Zero" is also a dark, depraved concept album about a vampire taking stock. With a menacing cyber-metal score playing behind furious worst-case-scenario tales such as "My Violent Heart" and "Me, I'm Not," it seems that Reznor still has a few years to go before fully exhuming that teenage angst that first surfaced on "Pretty Hate Machine." Musically, it's not that far removed from 2005's "With Teeth," which means it's a bit single-minded. At this point, however, Reznor can afford a little self-indulgence. It's just a shame that there's nothing as vulnerable or tuneful as "Hurt," the song Johnny Cash carried to his grave.