Author: Jon Kirby
Psychoactive drugs added to public water by the government. Fanatical domestic terrorists advocating “a nation of lone gunmen.” An ominous lack of separation between church and state, accompanied by covert executions of domestic dissidents. Terrifying hallucinations of a divine wrath known only as “The Presence.”
These might sound like the conceits of an upcoming Alan Moore graphic novel or Chris Carter TV series (or maybe just an uncomfortably familiar reality), but they’re not. These eerie, scattered details form what little fans have been able to divine about Year Zero, the new Nine Inch Nails album due out on April 17th.
After more than 15 highly successful years of mining the same angsty vein, NIN appear to be taking a sharp conceptual turn, even if the sonics remain rooted in industrial clang and scrape. Mastermind Trent Reznor describes the “highly conceptual” Year Zero as “the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist.” More specifically, the album seems to find Reznor getting out of his grimly introspective comfort zone, instead opting to paint a picture of a totalitarian, dystopic near-future America.
But the really interesting part about Year Zero is how the album has begun to unveil itself to fans: through one of the most interesting and creepy viral marketing campaigns in recent memory. Highlighted letters on NIN’s recent tour merchandise spelled out “I am trying to believe”, leading fans to an unsettling website describing the addition of a drug called Parepin to public water supplies. This site begat others, one of the best of which depicts an ultra-patriotic vista, complete with amber waves of grain-but when the user clicks and drags the mouse over the scene, it is reduced to a charred wasteland bearing the words “zero hope, zero chance.”
The crown jewel of this nascent conspiracy (dubbed the “NINspiracy” by quick-witted fans), for me at least, is an MP3 file labeled simply “ballgameOver.” The brief clip offers a monologue by an archetypal “lone nut”, describing an in-progress act of terrorism at a sporting event that culminates with the speaker planting a steel jacketed bullet in the head of an unidentified person. The clip’s not flawless-it’s just a touch stagy, and maybe too heavy on the processed-sounding FX-but it captures the zeitgeist so well it almost hurts, gluing together our post-Kennedy vertigo of interpretation, fear of terrorism, and globalized web savvy.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Year Zero online phenomena came from 42 Entertainment, the agency responsible for the much-beloved I Love Bees “alternative reality game” designed to create buzz (natch) for Halo 2. But the Year Zero campaign also stretches beyond the web. In a terrific flourish, NIN have leaked a couple of songs from Year Zero by leaving them on USB drives in the bathrooms at their shows on their current European tour.
And somewhat sadly, the songs themselves are a bit disappointing after all that. Not that they’re bad; they neatly mix the shiny pulse of With Teeth with an electronic minimalism almost reminiscent of Pretty Hate Machine, plus an admitted touch of the Bomb Squad’s noise collage. “My Violent Heart” actually forges into some typically inspired instrumental territory. But after the epic, uncanny sweep of the online campaign, it’s hard not to expect a total revelation-and the familiar if effective NIN aesthetic is a perhaps inevitable letdown. Still, Reznor himself has claimed that the campaign “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.”
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