review: nine inch nails - year zero

year zero - 28/100

this album has been pitched as a postapocalyptic police state-themed concept album, a complete departure from trent reznor's earlier work. while it does sound different than with teeth (less guitary), it's far worse. you guys know how i feel about inarticulate and relatively ignorant political statements in the form of thoroughly mediocre music, so this isn't going to be pretty. the fact is that the 'concept' part of the concept album doesn't really have a presence in the actual music. in reality, the only way trent reznor could actually put forth his 'concept' was to explicitly lay it out as narrative outside the context of the album.

the lyrics are the same old trent reznor lyrics (which is already a bad place to start), and he draws several images word for word from past albums. the fact that there's nothing new lyrically is ugly enough, but the fact that these same old lyrics have been repackaged and sold as completely cohesive, insightful, and political commentary is impossible to stomach. i'm guessing that if i were to hand a random passer-by year zero, they'd identify it much more as more angsty poor self-esteem or nondescript and undirected hostility and not at all as some intricate possible future.

the music itself is bland. it's certainly no extraordinary leap from past nine inch nails albums. less distorted guitar. more distorted synths. many songs end with totally incoherent noise, which i'm sure is supposed to make some grand statement. somehow i also get the vibe that this album is just a stale collection of quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes in 4/4 time. there are no unconventional beats to speak of. even the vocals are thoroughly regimented in 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. no metric experimentation. no odd intervals.

if this album has to exist in any capacity, it should have been made an ep maybe half the length of the actual album. so much of it is just so utterly useless, also making the prospect of a follow-up album next year fit for the rolling of the eyes. the concept itself should never have been connected to the music. the story is arrogant, overdone, and a poorly-masked attempt to criticize the current administration. trent reznor was pretty apolitical until the iraq war, throwing the relatively pompous the hand that feeds in to make vague attacks on george bush. consider this entire album his second effort at that exact same goal.

anyone who is fooled into thinking that this album has a story to tell, shows ingenuity, originality, and meaningful political dissent is, well, a fool.



HYPERPOWER! - 15
a pinion rerun, this track is just as useless. gone are the days when trent reznor can get away with building intensity by simply increasing distortion, volume, or number of instruments.

the beginning of the end - 25
boring boring boring MY SHARONA.

survivalism - 30
the hand that feeds remix. eighth note eighth note eighth note.

the good soldier - 40
there's not much to say about a lot of these songs because of how monotonous they are (hence why they should have been condensed into an ep). this song follows along the same lines, although it does flow a bit better than most others, and the vocals are less annoying. lyrics are the same as any other nine inch nails song, so trent reznor had to add 'soldier' to the title and words like 'gun' and 'blood' and 'bomb.'

vessel - 25
initially i thought 'there's no way that horrible noise could persist throughout the entire song.' oh, but it did. see, this could be any nine inch nails song about getting high, but this one's about some governmental superdrug, or whatever wikipedia says follows the storyline. i wouldn't know if trent reznor hadn't screamed it out independently of the music. the point is, the perfect drug is an infinitely better song.

me, i'm not - 33
i don't even know how this song fits into the 'concept.' the lyrics are exactly the same vague, self-loathing lyrics of past albums. on a different note, the rhythm, melody, and vocals of the chorus sound extremely pop musicky. as in like hip hop-influenced pop musicky. it almost makes the song tolerable, but then, random loud noises appear and i go listen to lcd soundsystem.

capital g - 20
i will bet you $20 that this song was written by marilyn manson. it sounds exactly like an antichrist superstar b-side. same pattern of generally two loud highly distorted notes trading off and then moving to another set of two highly distorted notes trading off. not terribly melodic. this song is probably the biggest perpetrator of using exact, word for word imagery from past songs 'haves and the have nots,' 'hands and knees,' etc. etc. and it's the second single. it carries the most laughably childish message since heresy.

my violent heart - 25
i know you're thinking 'i want more songs that end in awful noise.' this one's for you. it's the sort of 'we're the ostracized minority and we're rallying to defeat you' type song. the difference is that the rallying cry during the chorus is hard to take because of the horrible high pitched squeal accompanying it. this song has a basic basic purpose, and there are trillions of better songs that suit that purpose (go listen to you and whose army?)

the warning - 45
i have to admit, the repetitive bass/guitar line, while basic as all hell, is almost catchy. the lyrics are forgettable, as is the rest of the song. this would be on the cut list if year zero were to go into ep mode.

god given - 37
no discernable guitars at all here. trent reznor feels that he doesn't write enough songs about how god is a foolish concept. this song almost has a worthwhile beat, and almost has some worthwhile electronic aspects. but, then the chorus chimes in and all of the sudden it doesn't seem like it takes that much talent. i will give this song credit for having closing instrumentation that isn't just obnoxious noise. it was a nice change of pace.

meet your master - 37
look! it's head like a hole! it even tells you that you're going to get what you deserve! the vocal sort of call and response in the chorus is actually kind of catchy. it's sort of old school-era nine inch nails. kind of broken-ish, or at least as close as this album comes to something like that.

the greater good - 20
this song is just over four minutes and fifty seconds too long. nothing really happens. it could be passed off as sort of a spacey background piece, but it isn't. it's just sort of... there... doing nothing.

the great destroyer - 10
this song sounds like some sort of protools tutorial. the guitar line is woefully out of place, which has to be intentional because it's sort of distortion-free in a song with heavily distorted drum/synth lines. then it degenerates into mindless noise, and i go listen to lcd soundsystem again.

another version of the truth - 40
also gone are the days when sparse piano instrumentation and ambient background noise constitutes an interesting instrumental.

in this twilight - 40
this song almost starts off strong. the vocals almost actually fit the music. unfortunately, it fails to take advantage of its start and really doesn't go anywhere. hey, maybe that's the point or some crap. i guess this song is hopeful or something. trent reznor going into his high register is mildly pleasing, i must say. this song beats itself to death with monotony. p.s. he stole the drums from green day (it's a common rock beat, but it's more fun to think of it as american idiot thievery).

zero sum - 62
this is the most tolerable song on the album. the minimal minimal piano line actually works, as the song doesn't put too much weight on it (like another version of the truth). still nothing interesting rhythmically. the vocals are pushed way to the back, which is good, because i looked up the lyrics and they're just as shitty as the rest of the album. the chorus vocals are alright, as long as you don't mind being chastized.


the moral of this story is that 'sound of silver' is a really good album.

recommended music:
bjork - earth intruders
john mayer - kid a

10/8

tonight i sat down at a piano, having played less than three weeks, and set out to learn a particular song. by the time i got up a couple hours later, i had mastered this:



there might be a use for me yet.

recommended music:
radiohead - everything in its right place
the raconteurs - hands

no matter what continent or island or ice cap

Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

In November, Kurt Vonnegut turned 80. He published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952 at the age of 29. Since then he has written 13 others, including Slaughterhouse Five, which stands as one of the pre-eminent anti-war novels of the 20th century.

As war against Iraq looms, I asked Vonnegut, a reader and supporter of this magazine, to weigh in. Vonnegut is an American socialist in the tradition of Eugene Victor Debs, a fellow Hoosier whom he likes to quote: “As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

—Joel Bleifuss

You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars and now this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same?

One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were already all these games going on when I got here. … An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its state seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel, who was addressing a team of losing professional athletes: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself—as does George W. Bush, himself a kid—an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism and on and on.

What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.

Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?

That they are nonsense.

My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement? And how would you compare the movement against a war in Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era?

When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.

And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did not like anti-war protesters, nor any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a redress of grievances, “ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit,” as the saying goes.

As a writer and artist, have you noticed any difference between how the cultural leaders of the past and the cultural leaders of today view their responsibility to society?

Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To the Stalinist Soviet Union? What about responsibility to humanity in general? And leaders in what particular cultural activity? I guess you mean the fine arts. I hope you mean the fine arts. ... Anybody practicing the fine art of composing music, no matter how cynical or greedy or scared, still can’t help serving all humanity. Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up.

But that is the power of ear candy. The creation of such a universal confection for the eye, by means of printed poetry or fiction or history or essays or memoirs and so on, isn’t possible. Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author. Any ink-on-paper author can only hope at best to seem responsible to small groups or like-minded people somewhere. He or she might as well have given an interview to the editor of a small-circulation publication.

Maybe we can talk about the responsibilities to their societies of architects and sculptors and painters another time. And I will say this: TV drama, although not yet classified as fine art, has on occasion performed marvelous services for Americans who want us to be less paranoid, to be fairer and more merciful. M.A.S.H. and Law and Order, to name only two shows, have been stunning masterpieces in that regard.

That said, do you have any ideas for a really scary reality TV show?

“C students from Yale.” It would stand your hair on end.

What targets would you consider fair game for a satirist today?

Assholes.













'til next time, mr. vonnegut.

april 11th presents: january

yesterday i played frisbee in short sleeves and shorts. today:

what the hell?

recommended music:
nine inch nails - adrift and at peace
radiohead - like spinning plates