NIN - Year Zero / Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D

Nine Inch Nails peaked in 1994 with The Downward Spiral. Where do you go from the top? Downward, of course. NIN waited 5 years to make a follow up to their greatest achievement and released a bloated sleeper of a double disc album. It had its moments, but the fire was gone. 2004 they released another album that was alright, yet uninspired. This year’s, Year Zero rediscovered, or rather reinvented, the fire that once made them great. In the early nineties Trent focused his lyrics on the personal struggles with faith, desire, self worth, etc. It was the ultimate soundtrack to an angst ridden youth. Now that he is in his forties it is rather pathetic to be lamenting the same thing. Thus part of the shortcomings of 1999’s The Fragile. Year Zero is blippy and noisy industrial music with lyrics based around paranoid visions of a world led by GW. Most of the lyrics are written from the perspective of characters that he has set in a future that is an exaggeration of the threats of the fallout of a country continuing down the path we are on. A little social satire that is poignant today, yet not limited to having value only in the here and now. Reznor has raised the bar in terms of the notion of his music as art. Preceding the release of Year Zero, song titles and themes from the album were worked into the artwork on t-shirts and posters sold during their previous tours. The song titles and themes led devoted fans with lots of time on there hands, on an internet scavenger hunt that revealed an alternate reality puzzle set in the future as imagined for this album. Fans unfolded the backdrop for the concept leading up to the release. For nerds like me, this was way cool. More impressively, the album works just as well without the context of a bleak future laid out first. It is an effort right on par with TDS. Wikipedia has a pretty good synopsis of the web end (along with links) for those who are interested.
The sister remix album is a good listen as well. It's a remix album, that says the most of it. You're not going to uncover anything deeper in the story here, but the mixes are fun and work well enough to stand on their own.