Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails
Year Zero
2007
Industrial
Interscope

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
(Also included is a 500x500 album cover .jpeg)

Don't give a shit about the temperature in Guatemala.

Don't really see what all the fuss is about.
Ain't gonna worry 'bout no future generations.
I'm sure somebody's gonna figure it out.

"Capital G"

I'm sure some Nine Inch Nails die-hards are going to disagree with me here, but in my opinion, Year Zero is the best album Trent Reznor (who essentially is Nine Inch nails) ever put together. It fixes all the problems I've had with previous records (or, "Halos" as coined by Trent himself) and has a fresh new sound all it's own. My problem with The Downward Spiral was the corny, dated sounding synths and the cliche metal thrash guitar playing. My problem with The Fragile was that it was too self loathing and immature to be written by someone as old and smart as Reznor. Year Zero is able to fix all these things by using barely any guitar, really fresh sounding synths, effects, and MIDI controls, and a fresh, interesting concept for the album to focus on.

The concept is, in some ways, just as important as the music. Year Zero is a narration of a dystopian future of the United States where political power is abused to a breaking point, marking the start of a slow and painful death for the world as we know it. The year 0 B.A. (Born Again) is actually 2022 A.D. It is then that the United States institutes a new international calender, and all year prior to 0 are referred to as negative years. For instance, 2009 A.D. would be -13 B.A.

That's just the title, though. By the year Zero, the U.S. has been at war with an onslaught of bioterrorism attacks for some time. The government has assumed totalitarian control of the country, and there is no longer a distinct separation of church and state. The motto "whoever resists authority resists God" becomes the norm, and the fear of future terrorist attacks has launched violent faith-based crusades on other countries, and soldiers are driven by use of a government enlisted pills called "blisters," that equates the feelings of killing and sex.

Also, a drug called "parepin" has been added the the U.S. water supply that supposedly increases immunity to diseases and may protect against potential bioterrorism. But when citizens stop consuming the drug, they claim to have an increased clairty of thought. However, the government calls this mere paranoia. There was a recurring hallucination of parepin users, where they briefly see a ghostly, four-fingered hand reach down from the skies, make contact with Earth, and then brightly disappear. This is referred to as "The Presence," and is believed to be God. Later, this hallucination was seen by people who had not been under the influence of the U.S.' new water supply.

These events eventually lead to absolute power of the United States, and Trent Reznor claims that it all started with the election of George W. Bush. It's quite a dark story, with an ending that lets you decide for yourself how the story concludes.

The music is awesome. Trent takes a more electronic approach industrial music with Year Zero, leaving the grittier sound of The Downward Spiral and The Fragile behind in place of noise-based sound effects and songs led by keyboards, drum machines, and percussion instead of electric guitars (which are almost completely absent from the record. The lyrics are top-notch, and really do a good job of presenting the story. The mood is bleak, cold, and shocking, and will leave you thinking about past, current, and future events - and their repercussions.

I recommend you buy this one, the packaging and artwork is incredible.

Click here to download part 1 (63.44 MB)
Click here to download part 2 (70.83 MB)

Those links used to be broken, but they work now. So if you tried to download before with no luck, check one more time and be sure.

Contains a few instances of brief, strong language.

Buy it!
CD / Vinyl / Digital Copy