With the leak of Year Zero onto the torrents, myself and a group of friends took the opportunity to do an early critique on the new works of Nine Inch Nails, (or primarily, Trent Reznor). Don't worry, we will all be buying the album as the album case and book themselves are worth the money.
Overall, without going into a thorough song by song breakdown, it suffices to say that this album delivers from one end to the other. It was around an hour of head pounding, foot stomping, exciting music of a genre that Trent owns. From the bass pounding almost hip-hop backing sounding Me, I'm Not, to the Closer-esque fun beat of God Given, this album will satisfy all from the hard-core Nails fans, to the borderline radio loving 'I heard Closer in a bar and loved it' group. It is a dramatic improvement over the last product of the band, With Teeth. This isn't a slam on WT, it just demonstrates that Trent continues to prove he can find new sounds, mix new beats, and feed his fanbase.
As a whole this album ranks in the top three works of the band (the other two being Downward Spiral and Fragile), but if it had to be ranked, it would probably be between the two. The work should put Trent in consideration for some award hardware, but knowing the standard policy, they'd probably lose to Nickleback or Jethro Tull.
Bravo Trent.
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