Year Zero
| Year Zero | |||||
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| Studio album by Nine Inch Nails | |||||
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Publication |
April 2007 |
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| Label (s) | Interscope Records | ||||
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Alternative rock , alternative metal , electronica , industrial rock |
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Title (number) |
16 |
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running time |
63 minutes 42 seconds |
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Year Zero ( English for "year zero") is the fifth regular studio album from Trent Reznor's music project Nine Inch Nails . It was released on April 13, 2007 in Europe and on April 17, 2007 in the US via Interscope Records . The songs Survivalism and Capital G were released as singles.
Year Zero is a concept album depicting a dystopian society in 2022. This happens not only through the music, the lyrics or the artwork of the album, but also to a considerable extent through an alternate reality game developed by 42 Entertainment . For this purpose, various puzzles and clues were placed at concerts, band merchandising and on the Internet in advance of the publication.
With Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D ("Year Zero Remixed" in Leetspeak ) a remix album for Year Zero was released in November 2007 .
In September 2010, a television series for HBO about the concept of Year Zero was announced, which is to be produced by Lawrence Bender and developed by Reznor and Daniel Knauf , but has not yet been realized.
admission
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By Reznor's standards, the period between the release of Year Zero and the previous album With Teeth was unusually short at just under two years. The previous Nine Inch Nails studio albums were released approximately every 5 years. As usual, Reznor did most of the songwriting and recording process alone, rarely using the help of studio musicians.
He started recording Year Zero in September 2006. At that time, Nine Inch Nails were still on tour with With Teeth .
“[...] I already worked on the new record on the“ With Teeth ”tour. Back then I recorded a lot in hotel rooms, backstage and on bus trips. [...] The results sounded special. I couldn't just record a drum kit because there weren't any. Most of the time I didn't even have a guitar. "
The lyrics, however, were only written after the tour had ended. According to his own statement, Reznor initially had no precise idea of where to locate the album lyrically and thematically.
“I've known for a long time that I can't write lyrics on tour. I need time for that, I have to understand the songs. […] The whole experiment started with a noise on my laptop that drew me into a brief daydream about the end of the world. I rolled out this idea. "
The result stands in contrast to his previous work, in which the texts were always rather introspective.
Musical style
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Due to the limitation in the songwriting process, a large part of the music was created directly on the laptop. Reznor said that it would sound more like a “sound collage” and that “a lot of gimmicks” could be found in it.
Keyboards and drum machines dominate the sound of the album, "while the guitars most as a splash of color in Spartan, efficiently arranged sound skeleton can be used." Only in the song Capital G are additionally some classical orchestral instruments such as trumpet, saxophone and trombone used.
The voice of Reznor is described as "distinctive" and "emotional"; it varies "between angry hooklines, dark whispering and pleading".
Pitchfork Media compares the songs Vessel , My Violent Heart and especially the ending of The Great Destroyer with Merzbow and The Bomb Squad - the long-time production team of Public Enemy . In an interview, Reznor actually cited Public Enemy's early work as a source of inspiration for the album.
With hyperpower! and Another Version of the Truth , the album again contains two purely instrumental pieces. There weren't any on the previous With Teeth - in contrast to its previous album The Fragile , which contained several instrumental pieces.
The framework story
The story of Year Zero takes place in the USA in the year 2022, when a fundamental Christian government came to power after terrorist attacks on the country. On the occasion of the “rebirth” of the country, the calendar is set back to the year zero (based on historical calendar changes, for example by the Khmer Rouge or the French Revolution ). Within this scenario, one learns details of the fictional future from different perspectives on a number of different websites.
This has been referred to in the media as a " viral marketing campaign "; an expression that Reznor was not particularly happy with:
“The term 'marketing' sure is a frustrating one for me at the moment. What you are now starting to experience IS 'year zero'. It's not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a record - it IS the art form… and we're just getting started. Hope you enjoy the ride. "
“The term 'marketing' is certainly a bit frustrating for me at the moment. What you are now beginning to experience IS 'year zero'. It's not some kind of gimmick to get you guys to buy the album - it's the art form ... and we're just getting started. (I) hope you enjoy the ride. "
Reznor explicitly wanted his gloomy vision of the future to be understood as a criticism of the Bush administration. It should be "a concept album against the politics of George W. Bush ", which does not address the president directly, but "negotiates the problems [...] at a higher level". It is "good that there are people like Michael Moore , but my form of criticism is different," said Reznor in an interview.
When developing the concept, Reznor remembered the marketing campaign for the film AI - Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg , which also used an alternate reality game . The company 42 Entertainment, whose employees had designed the AI project years earlier, was hired to implement the ideas.
There was largely praise in the press for the concept, for example Rolling Stone wrote that the Year Zero project was "much cooler" than the one for the television series Lost .
The digital scavenger hunt
I am trying to believe
The “digital scavenger hunt” began on February 12, 2007 with a band T-shirt on which some letters of the printed tour dates were highlighted. They result in the sentence “ I am trying to believe ” (German: “I try to believe”). Initial information on the background story can be found on the website www.iamtryingtobelieve.com .
According to this website, the US government is adding a drug called parepin to drinking water to control the minds of the population under the pretext that it is a means of strengthening the immune system against biological terrorist attacks. This should also be in connection with a frequently occurring appearance of a hand coming out of heaven (called "The Presence"; dt. "The presence"; "the presence" ).
An e-mail address is also given that can be used to contact the operator of the site. If you do this, you will receive a message via autoreply in which the operator revises his allegations against the government.
More websites
Around 30 websites that tell the story of Year Zero from different perspectives were discovered between February and April 2007. There is, for example, a memorial page for the victims of a terrorist attack on Los Angeles, homepages of churches and military units or even pages calling for resistance against the government under the motto “Art is resistance”.
The page anotherversionofthetruth.com , on the other hand, looks at first glance like a propaganda page of the fictional "US Bureau of Morality", but if you move the mouse pointer over the picture, it becomes clear that this is also a website of the resistance.
USB sticks found at concerts
During a concert by the band in Lisbon , a USB stick containing the song My Violent Heart in MP3 format was found in a toilet . More USB sticks with the songs Me, I'm Not and In This Twilight were found a little later in Barcelona and Manchester, respectively. These deliberately placed leaks made fans of the band accessible on the Internet, whereupon the RIAA - the association of the music industry in the USA - ironically requested the deletion of these files.
The last few seconds of the leaked version of My Violent Heart show an image of The Presence in a logarithmic spectrogram . On the USB stick in Barcelona , in addition to the song Me, I'm Not, there was a second file called 2432.mp3 with static noise, which contained a telephone number visible in the spectrogram, which in turn referred to one of the many websites. On the album this noise is no longer at the end of My Violent Heart , but at the end of The Warning , the lyrical content of which can also be related to The Presence .
"Art is resistance"
The Presence in the spectrogram of the leaked version of My Violent Heart / the album version of The Warning
hidden phone number in the spectrum of 2432.mp3
Pre-publication on the Internet
About a week before the album was released in stores, it could be heard completely and free of charge in the stream on the band's homepage or on Myspace - a reaction from Reznor to the misguided handling of the copyright problem on the part of the record companies:
“The record company is certainly not happy about that. You don't understand what I'm doing right now. […] I'll even release the entire album in its individual recording tracks, which people can then use to make their own versions of the songs. [...] And above all, it dismantles this nonsense that music only belongs to us artists. That copyright stuff ... Fuck all that! It's music. It is there to be discovered and shared. "
Year Zero was the last studio album by Nine Inch Nails to be released on Interscope Records . Later publications appeared on the label The Null Corporation, newly founded by Trent Reznor himself .
Artwork
| Year Zero Cover |
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| Rob Sheridan , 2007 |
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Link to the picture |
The art director was Trent Reznor's friend Rob Sherdian . The album cover shows a picture of The Presence in front of a hill. The blue-tinged image is taken from the perspective of a passenger in a car.
The surface of the CD itself has a special feature. It has a temperature-sensitive coating so that the color of the medium changes from brown to white when it is heated (for example by prolonged contact or playing in a CD player). The lettering , which is only then clearly visible, shows some groups of binary digits which, when converted into ASCII format, refer to another website.
According to Reznor, the surcharge for this special coating was 83 cents per CD; nevertheless, a much higher premium was sometimes required for the album, which led to differences between Reznor and his record company.
The artwork also includes a 24-page booklet with the lyrics. In addition, a few other gimmicks cross-reference the album's backstory; such as a notice from the United States Bureau of Morality with the appeal “ be a patriot - be an informer! ”(German:“ Be a patriot - be an informant! ”) With the corresponding telephone number to display“ subversive deeds or thoughts ”.
Reviews
The reviews of the album were positive to mixed. At Metacritic , the album received a rating of 76% as an average of 23 professional reviews as well as the rating Generally favorable .
The album received great praise from Allmusic , for example , where Year Zero received four and a half out of five points. The sound of the album is described as "experimental, full of dynamism, tension and character". The "simply moving 'Zero-Sum' which ends the album" receives special praise. In summary, Allmusic writes that Year Zero is the best nine-inch nails album since The Downward Spiral , which was released in 1994 .
Plattentests.de was similarly positive and gave the album nine out of ten points. In particular, the “rhythmic conciseness” and the “articulated refrains” of the album are highlighted positively. Through the "masterful choreography of sounds, voices and rhythms", the "parasympathetic nervous system reacts with sweat and goose bumps."
The New Musical Express rated the album with five out of ten points, however, only average. The album is too lengthy and resembles too much the ambient-heavy pieces from The Fragile , with the exceptions with successful melodies being the pieces Survivalism , Capital G and "God Given". It is also criticized that the live band, which is actually well put together, is used too rarely on the album.
The German-language music magazine Visions gave the album a grade of 7.8 out of 12. According to the album review, “among the 16 titles there are inevitably a few that are less bursting, dismaying, feverish or rousing”, on the other hand, “but also far more as a handful of songs that immediately generate the nasty joy of audiophile paranoia that you would want from a nine-inch nails record. "
The review on vampster.com adds that the album hardly contains any “catchy hits” like Closer or “fragile structures” like Hurt , but instead “the team is the star”.
Charts
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The album made it to number two on the US album charts and sold 187,000 units in the first week. In Germany and Great Britain it came in sixth, in Austria in fourth and in Switzerland in 13th. Year Zero also made it into the top 10 of the national album charts in countries such as Australia, Canada, Finland and Sweden.
The first single, Survivalism , jumped to number 28 in the British single charts. In the US, the album made it to number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks . It was the fourth nine-inch-nails single in a row that made it to number one on the charts.
Capital G , the album's second single, was released more for promotional purposes; there was no music video and no over-the-counter singles in CD format. Accordingly, there were hardly any noteworthy chart successes.
Participating musicians
- Trent Reznor - vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, production
- William Artope - Trumpet on Capital G
- Matt Demeritt - tenor saxophone on Capital G
- Josh Freese - drums on hyperpower! and Capital G
- Jeff Gallegos - brass arrangement, baritone saxophone on Capital G.
- Doug Trantow - Recording Technique
- Brian Gardner - Mastering
- Elizabeth Lea - Trumpet on Capital G
- Alan Moulder - mix
- Atticus Ross - production, sound design
- Saul Williams - backing vocals on Survivalism and Me, I'm Not
Performance 2007
The tour for the album was simply called "Performance 2007". Nine Inch Nails played a total of 76 concerts between February and September 2007 as part of the tour. The tour kicked off with three concerts in Lisbon, Portugal, between February 10 and 12, 2007 before the release of Year Zero in April 2007. The first USB stick was also here found with the song My Violent Heart . The last concert took place in Honolulu , Hawaii , which was also the only concert in the United States, as North America had already been intensively played with 131 concerts during the previous Live: With Teeth Tour .
In addition to the final concert in Honolulu, Nine Inch Nails performed 58 times in Europe, ten times in Asia and seven times in Australia during the “Performance 2007” tour. The band played in the following line-up:
- Trent Reznor - vocals, guitar, keyboard, tambourine , mbira
- Aaron North - guitar, keyboard, backing vocals
- Jeordie White - bass, guitar, keyboard, backing vocals
- Alessandro Cortini - keyboard, programming, guitar, backing vocals
- Josh Freese - drums
Tour poster 2007
Live concert in Munich
Alessandro Cortini
Jeordie White
swell
- ↑ a b Year Zero at allmusic.com
- ↑ … At once fresh, frightening and fulfilling . bbc.co.uk
- ↑ a b c Interview in Kerrang! Magazine with Trent Reznor ( memento of the original from March 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. roadrunnerrecords.com
- ↑ 42 creates viral campaign for Nine Inch Nails . digitalartsonline.co.uk, February 14, 2007
- ↑ a b c d Christian Kortmann: Virus set to music - The great destroyer . sueddeutsche.de, April 16, 2007
- ↑ a b c d e Michael Paoletta: Reznor adopts unusual Web campaign for new album . reuters.com, April 2, 2007
- ↑ Year Zero: Trent Reznor's concept album will be adapted as an HBO series . moviegod.de
- ↑ a b Visions , issue 170, May 2007, p. 32
- ↑ a b Visions , issue 170, May 2007, p. 35
- ↑ a b c Review on vampster.com
- ^ Year Zero at Pitchfork Media
- ↑ a b anotherversionofthetruth.com/
- ↑ a b Nine Inch Nails: Spooky Scavenger Hunt on the Net . at laut.de February 20, 2007
- ↑ paranoia lampooned in disc's marketing . ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Times Colonist, canada.com, April 15, 2007
- ↑ a b Visions , issue 170, May 2007, p. 34
- ↑ [ "Year Zero" Project = Way Cooler Than "Lost" ( Memento from December 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) "Year Zero" Project = Way Cooler Than "Lost" ], Rolling Stone, February 22, 2007
- ↑ "I Am Trying To Believe" T-Shirt. ninwiki.com
- ↑ iamtryingtobelieve.com
- ↑ Timeline of Year Zero Discovery on the NIN Fan Wiki
- ^ Proven Related Web Sites . in the NIN fan wiki
- ↑ hollywoodinmemoriam.org
- ↑ churchofplano.com/
- ↑ 105thairbornecrusaders.com/
- ↑ artisresistance.com
- ↑ US Wiretap . NIN Fan Wiki
- ^ The Warning . NIN Fan Wiki
- ↑ Message. theninhotline.net, April 10, 2007
- ↑ Multitrack Audio Files ( Memento of the original from April 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. yearzero.nin.com
- ↑ Homepage of The Null Corporation ( Memento of the original from September 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ exterminal.net/
- ↑ External . in the NIN fan wiki
- ^ Q & A with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails . news.com.au, May 17, 2007
- ↑ 18664456580 . in the NIN fan wiki
- ↑ a b Year Zero at Metacritic
- ↑ Year Zero at plattentests.de
- ↑ Year Zero at nme.com
- ↑ Sascha Kruger. In: Visions , issue 171, June 2007, p. 113
- ↑ a b c Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
- ↑ Chuck Klosterman: The Ethics Paradox . esquire.com
- ↑ Year Zero in the Australian album charts australian-charts.com
- ↑ Year Zero on the Billboard Charts (USA & Canada)
- ↑ Year Zero in the Finnish album charts. finnishcharts.com
- ↑ Year Zero on the Swedish album charts. swedishcharts.com
- ↑ a b Performance 2007 in the NIN Fan Wiki
- ↑ Live: With Teeth on the NIN Fan Wiki
Remarks
- ↑ There are a total of six instrumental tracks on the double album The Fragile : The Frail , Just Like You Imagined , Pilgrimage , The Mark Has Been Made , Complication and Ripe (With Decay)
- ↑ The Presence appears even more frequently in the Year Zero cosmos; for example on the album cover.
- ^ The wording of the reply e-mail: “ Thank you for your interest. It is now clear to me that Parepin is a completely safe and effective agent developed to protect us from bio-terrorism. The Administration is acting purely in the best interests of its citizens; to suggest otherwise was irresponsible and I deeply regret it. I'm drinking the water. So should you. ”
- ↑ please note that title 14 of the CD is called the same
- ↑ The "US Bureau of Morality" also appears in the artwork and on some other websites.
- ↑ Both titles mentioned appeared on The Downward Spiral in 1994
