Rating: 5 out of 6 stars
Interscope; 2007
Nine Inch Nail’s fifth full album entitled Year Zero (Halo 24) gave me a shock that had nothing to do with Trent Reznor’s often hostile lyrics. It’s not the coolest thing I have ever seen, but on that day, it made me do a quadruple-take: on release day I put the disc into my car stereo as a black CD, and when I arrived home and ejected the disc, it had turned mostly white. What was left over was bits of binary code and other bits of ‘digital’-looking imagery. This almost thoroughly boring anecdote is meant to illustrate that even after 19 year of existence, Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails is still trying its best to surprise and be innovative with their fans. And, this is quite evident in the music itself of Year Zero.
