If With Teeth was Pretty Hate Machine filtered through The Fragile, Year Zero is The Downward Spiral filtered through With Teeth. Recorded largely on a laptop during Nine Inch Nails’ world tour promoting With Teeth, it is a concept album set in the USA of 2022, where power and greed rule, people are encouraged to spy on their friends and neighbours and the wrongs of the government are done in the name of God, all under the watchful eye of a president whose name begins with G. Oh, and the drinking water is drugged. It’s the future, you see.

As a dystopian nightmare, Year Zero does very well. Trent Reznor paints a clear picture of our imminent demise and if there’s one thing you can take away and say you’ve learned about the end of the world it’s that it will be REALLY FUCKING LOUD! Get yourself to the nearest good quality hi-fi, crank up the volume and be prepared to drown in a sea of bass of many and varied kinds, while buzzing guitars swoop down like vultures and tear at your face.

Oh yes, Reznor is making really harsh, nasty music again and this time it’s without drugs, so he can really think hard about it. On The Greater Good he does it with a slow, brooding bass line and some ominous wind chimes, while on The Great Destroyer he disarms you by sounding like Imogen Heap before unleashing what sounds like someone torturing an electronic dog. Elsewhere he goes down the more orthodox route of just rocking the fuck out, which is always welcome on a Nine Inch Nails record and delivered with fervour on this one.

It’s too early to make any such claims just yet, but by combining the more commercial sound and political slant of With Teeth with the vomit-inducing horror of The Downward Spiral (come on, listening to that album has made you throw up at least once, right? No? Oh, okay), Trent Reznor may have created his defining work. And if that’s not cool enough for you, the paint on the CD is heat-reactive - put it in your CD player one colour and it’ll come out another.

Label: Interscope
Website: www.nin.com
Release date: 16th April 2007

Tracklist:

1. Hyperpower!
2. The Beginning Of The End
3. Survivalism
4. The Good Soldier
5. Vessel
6. Me, I’m Not
7. Capital G
8. My Violent Heart
9. The Warning
10. God Given
11. Meet Your Master
12. The Greater Good
13. The Great Destroyer
14. Another Version Of The Truth
15. In This Twilight
16. Zero-Sum