cdm72's Full Review: Year Zero [Digipak] by Nine Inch Nails
After the disappointingly same-old-same-old of 2005’s Halo 19, I believe the general consensus was that Trent Reznor had shot his creative wad over a decade earlier and had since just been coasting by on name recognition and a handful of angry clichés. The release of 2007’s Halo 24: YEAR ZERO, however, was a big fk you to the haters and a very sincere and beautiful love letter to the fans.
With a brilliant marketing plan and his best collection of songs in ten years, Reznor hit the streets in early 2007 with NIN concert shirts containing hidden messages, abandoned USB drives found in concert arena bathrooms, and secret websites, all of which contained clues to the upcoming album and concept of Year Zero.
The Story:
The year is 2022, or Year Zero, established by the government to signify the year America begins to rebuild itself. Having seized control of the country, the US government keeps a tight reign on things through several fronts, the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano among them. In addition they spike the water with a sedative called Parepin. To fight off the effects of the drug and re-establish control by the people, a resistance movement has sprung up. And amid all this chaos, there’s The Presence, a “ghostly arm” seen in brief glimpses reaching down from the sky. Whether an hallucination brought on by Parepin or a corporeal entity, The Presence has begun to have an incredible impact on society.
The Halo:
I’ve always considered Reznor’s best work to be his concept albums, and Halo 24 is the concept album to the nth degree, with websites, alternate-reality games, dummy answering services, staged resistance meetings, you name it, all designed to enhance the Year Zero experience. You can even go to YouTube and see video of The Presence. There’s no doubting Reznor’s passion and commitment to this project and it’s this depth of involvement that sets him apart from other “artists”.
Halo 24 opens with a militant drumbeat instrumental, “Hyperpower!”, that sets the stage for this new world order and it’s easy to imagine the masses gathering under this rallying cry, coming from all corners of the world to be indoctrinated by the sermon delivered in track two, “The Beginning of the End”:
Down on your knees
You'll be left behind
This is the beginning
Watch what you think
They can read your mind
This is the beginning
I got my mark, see it in my eyes
This is the beginning
Well my reflection I don't recognize
This is the beginning
The brilliance of Halo 24, for me, is the myriad points of view from which we see this story. There’s the resistance in track two, then we shift POV to the military in “Survivalism” while zeroing in next on one lone soldier trying desperately to ignore his better judgment and follow orders in “The Good Soldier”.
I am trying to see
I am trying to believe
This is not where I should be
I am trying to believe
Blood hardens in the sand
Cold metal in my hand
Hope you understand the way that things are gonna be
There's nowhere left to hide
'Cause God is on our side
I keep telling myself
But all is not just marching and mob beatings; there are other forces at work in this world where the government is trying to erase the line between Church and State, maybe even to the point of creating their own living messiah to better lead their people. From “Vessel”:
I let you put it in my mouth
I let it get under my skin
I let you pump it through my veins
I let you take me from within…
I can leave all the past behind
I can see right through the whole façade
I'm becoming something else
I am turning into God
I have to say, my admiration for this album is unparalleled. Ten seconds of listening is all the time it takes to clue you in this is a Nine Inch Nails record as it’s undeniably Trent Reznor’s sound, yet at the same time it’s so far removed from what’s come before, a new way of thinking and recording. No more angry “the world is so black and heartless and everyone hates me but not as much as I hate them” lyrics. Instead Halo 24 doesn’t talk about such a world, it draws you into it. The black hole of melancholy evoked by the first 30 seconds of “Me, I’m Not” is the sound Reznor’s been searching for his entire career while “Capital G” is such a perfect pop song without sacrificing one ounce of its requisite anger and sarcasm. And there’s no one else in music today who could have crafted the absolute chaos that makes up the last 90 seconds of “The Great Destroyer” into something that’s almost melodious and beautiful better than Trent fckng Reznor.
Having turned his attentions away from his John Doe journals to the world outside his window, it seems things have finally caught up to Reznor’s own internal world and now he can get the same effect of isolation and grey skies but on a much grander scale. Halo 24 is the perfect representation of that world, and the concept behind it is so much more complex than the cliché grim and gritty future society people have been stealing from BLADE RUNNER for the last couple of decades.
The duel themes of Church and State run throughout the album, showcasing Reznor’s dissatisfaction with both forms of organized representation. In the end, both the Church and the State want you to be a good boy and “color inside the lines” (to steal a line from exterminal.net, one of the many branches of the Halo 24 experience). And let’s face it, Trent Reznor may not stay within the lines, but he paints a prettier picture than most. And it’s not as if he’s saying anything on this record most of us haven’t thought from time to time anyway, especially within the last several years.
If your only experience with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails has, to date, been the line “I want to fk you like an animal”, then you don’t know the half of it. The heir apparent to Bowie’s free-thinker--only this one has more in common with Mensa than with the stoner on the corner across from your high school--has made his fortune by absolutely refusing to be told what to do. Halo 24 proves it’s never a good time to count him out because, like I just said, he hates being told what to do. And just when you start to dismiss him as irrelevant and past his prime, he’s going to come back with something like this which pretty much screams at you, “I will decide when I’m over and done, fk you very much!” Now, be a good little consumer and go buy this record. After all, it’s what all the cool kids are doing, and you do what to be like them. Don’t you???
On his 2007 full-length studio follow-up to With Teeth, Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor steps away from the relatively straight-ahead rock aes...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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