Ah yes, the dreaded concept album. For some it is an opportunity to tell a cohesive story (see Pink Floyd’s The Wall, The Who’s Tommy) but for most an excuse to ram pretentious, half baked ideas down our throats (see, if you dare, Vanilla Fudge’s The Beat Goes On, Protest the Hero’s Kezia).
Never one to back away from a challenge, Nine Inch Nails’ string puller Trent Reznor has reportedly claimed Year Zero is the first of two concept albums coming our way. There’s also talk of a feature length film with Reznor’s old chum David Fincher linked to the director’s chair.
The industrial rocker says the idea behind Year Zero came to him in a daydream about the end of the world as we know it.
“It takes place about 15 years in the future,” he reveals. “Things are not good. If you imagine a world where greed and power continue to run their likely course, you’ll have an idea of the backdrop. The world has reached the breaking point – politically, spiritually and ecologically.”
They say:
Kerrang!: “Eighteen years on he’s still at it, still convincing, still relevant – and still no one else sounds like this.”
Sputnikmusic: “Trent Reznor makes an easily digestible album with hooks galore, heart and loads of what we have come to expect from NIN.”
We say:
After the release of 2005’s terribly inconsistent With Teeth album there were some who feared Reznor’s best days were well and truly behind him. But fear not, Year Zero marks a return to form for the reclusive one man band.
Borrowing elements from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, Reznor has created a dystopian future in which its inhabitants are governed by religious fanatics, sedated by drugs and spooked by an otherworldly “presence” that haunts the skies.
A flicker of hope comes in the shape of a resistance group who send information back through time to prevent this hell on earth from ever happening. Or so we think.
Confused? You needn’t be. Because even if you find the concept more trouble than its worth, there’s enough tunes here to quench your melodic thirst.
With much of Year Zero recorded on a laptop, Reznor dresses up conventional song structures in beeps, ominous synths and static.
Tracks such as the pulsating ‘The Beginning of the End’ and the faith in ruins electro funk ‘The Good Soldier’ are destined to be live favourites, while the Cylon engineered ‘Vessel’, which alludes to the fictional drug Parepin pumped into the population’s water supply, is an infectious slice of dance punk paranoia.
Elsewhere, ‘In This Twilight’ is one of the highlights of Reznor’s songwriting career, his rousing vocals warding off the darkness that threatens to engulf this post apocalyptic setting as the sun bids farewell forever.
When all’s said and done, Year Zero strikes the perfect balance between Aphex Twin like experimentation and accessibility. Rarely has the end of the world sounded so good.
**Like this? Try these:
Aphex Twin – Richard D James
Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Thom Yorke – The Eraser
RELEASED
16th April ‘06
LABEL
Island
POSTED...
Wed 18 Apr 2007 at 7:27am
