Year Zero is the fifth studio album by the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released by Interscope Records on April 17, 2007. Conceived while touring in support of the band's previous album, With Teeth (2005), the album was recorded in late 2006. It was produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and was the band's first studio album since 1994's The Downward Spiral that was not co-produced by long-time collaborator Alan Moulder. It was the band's last album for Interscope until the Tron: Ares soundtrack in 2025, following Reznor's departure after the album's release due to a dispute regarding overseas pricing.
In contrast to the introspective style of songwriting featured on the band's previous work, the record is a concept album that criticizes contemporary policies of the United States government by presenting a dystopian vision of the year 2022. It was part of a larger Year Zero project, which included a remix album, an alternate reality game of the same name, as well as a conceived television or film adaptation. The game expanded upon the album's storyline, using websites, pre-recorded phone messages, murals, among other media in promotion of the project. The album was promoted by two singles: "Survivalism" and "Capital G".
Year Zero received positive reviews from critics, who complimented its concept and production, as well as the accompanying alternate reality game. The album reached number 2 in the United States, number 6 in the United Kingdom, and the top 10 in some other countries.
Recording
In a 2005 interview with Kerrang!, Trent Reznor raised his intentions to write material for a new release while on tour promoting With Teeth. He reportedly began work on the new album by September 2006. Reznor devised much of the album's musical direction on his laptop. Reznor told Kerrang! in a later interview, "When I was on the Live: With Teeth tour, to keep myself busy I just really hunkered down and was working on music the whole time, so this kept me in a creative mode and when I finished the tour I felt like I wasn't tired and wanted to keep at it."
The limitations of devising the album's musical direction on a tour bus forced Reznor to work differently from usual. Reznor said, "I didn't have guitars around because it was too much hassle... It was another creative limitation... If I were in my studio, I would have done things the way I normally do them. But not having the ability to do that forced me into trying some things that were fun to do."
By the end of the tour, Reznor began work on the album's lyrical concepts, attempting to break away from his typically introspective approach. Reznor drew inspiration from his concern at the state of affairs in the United States and at what he envisioned as the country's political, spiritual, and social direction. Note: DVD included with pre-ordered copies of Year Zero from Best Buy. Year Zero was mixed in January 2007, and Reznor stated on his blog that the album was finished as of February 5. The album's budget was a reported US$2million, but since Reznor composed most of the album himself on his laptop and in his home-studio, much of the budget instead went toward the extensive accompanying promotional campaign.
A song cut from the album included vocal work by Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme. The same year, Reznor contributed vocals to their song "Era Vulgaris", which was also cut from the album of the same name.
Composition and themes
The album's music features the styles of industrial rock, electro-industrial, electronic, and digital hardcore. Reznor called Year Zero a "shift in direction" in that it "doesn't sound like With Teeth". He also said that when he finishes a new album, he has to "go into battle with the people whose job it is to figure out how to sell the record. The only time that didn't happen was [for] With Teeth. This time, however, [he was] expecting an epic struggle. [Year Zero] is not a particularly friendly record and it certainly doesn't sound like anything else out there right now."
Fifteen original tracks were considered for inclusion on the album, which Reznor described as "Highly conceptual. Quite noisy. Fucking cool." Reznor also described the album as a "collage of sound type of thing", citing musical inspiration from early Public Enemy records, specifically the production techniques of the Bomb Squad. Most of Year Zeros musical elements were created by Reznor solely on his laptop, as opposed to the instrument-heavy With Teeth. AllMusic's review described the album's laptop-mixed sound: "guitars squall against glitches, beeps, pops, and blotches of blurry sonic attacks. Percussion looms large, distorted, organic, looped, screwed, spindled and broken." Many reviews of the album compared the album's electronic sound to earlier Nine Inch Nails releases such as The Downward Spiral and The Fragile, while contrasting its heavily modified sounds to the more "organic" approach of With Teeth. Many critics also commented on the album's overall tone, including descriptions such as "lots of silver and grey ambience" and reference to the album's "oblique tone". The New York Times review described the album's sound by saying "Hard beats are softened with distortion, static cushions the tantrums, sneaky bass lines float beneath the surface." The article went on to describe individual tracks: "And as usual the music is packed with details: "Meet Your Master" goes through at least three cycles of decay and rebirth; part of the fun of "The Warning" is tracking the ever-mutating timbres."
Many of the songs on the album feature an extended instrumental ending, which encompasses the entire second half of the three-minute long "The Great Destroyer". The album was co-produced by Reznor and Atticus Ross, mixed by long-time collaborator Alan Moulder, and mastered by Brian Gardner. The album features instrumental contributions by live band member Josh Freese and vocals by Saul Williams.
Nine Inch Nails' 2006 tour merchandise designs featured overt references to the United States military, which Reznor said "reflect[ed] future directions". Reznor later described Year Zero as "the soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist". The album criticizes the American government's policies, and "could be about the end of the world". Reznor specifically cited what he labeled as the "erosion of freedoms" and "the way that we treat the rest of the world and our own citizens". Reznor had previously called the results of the 2004 US election "one step closer to the end of the world."
Even though the fictional story begins in January 2007, the timeline of the album and alternate reality game mentions historical events, such as the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War. From there, fictional events lead to worldwide chaos, including bioterrorism attacks, the United States engaging in nuclear war with Iran, and the elimination of American civil liberties at the hands of the fictional government agency the Bureau of Morality. Regardless of being fictional, a columnist of the Hartford Courant commented, "What's scary is that this doesn't seem as far-fetched as it should, given recent revelations about the FBI's abuse of the Patriot Act and the dissent-equals-disloyalty double-speak coming out of Washington in recent years."The "recent revelations" he referred to was the Justice Department's inspector general revealing abuses of the Patriot Act by the FBI.
Artwork
All of the artwork for Year Zero was created by Rob Sheridan, art director for Nine Inch Nails, who is also credited for artwork on With Teeth, among other Nine Inch Nails releases since 2000. The album features a thermo-chrome heat-sensitive CD face which appears black when first opened, but reveals a black binary code on a white background when heat is generated from the album being played. The binary sequence translates to "exterminal.net", the address of a website involved in the alternate reality game. Reznor displayed displeasure at the extra dollars added to the CD's price in Australia for the thermo-coating.
Included with the album is a small insert that is a warning from the fictional United States Bureau of Morality (USBM), with a phone number to report people who have "engaged in subversive acts". When the number is called, a recording from the USBM is played, claiming "By calling this number, you and your family are implicitly pleading guilty to the consumption of anti-American media and have been flagged as potential militants."
It was named one of the best album covers of 2007 by Rolling Stone.
Promotion
While work continued on the album, Reznor hinted in an interview that it was "part of a bigger picture of a number of things I'm working on". In February 2007 fans discovered that a new Nine Inch Nails tour t-shirt contained highlighted letters that spelled out the words "I am trying to believe". This phrase was registered as a website URL, and soon several related websites were also discovered in the IP range, all describing a dystopian vision of the fictional "Year 0". It was later reported that 42 Entertainment had created these websites to promote Year Zero as part of an alternate reality game.
The Year Zero story takes place in the United States in the year 2022; or "Year 0" according to the American government, being the year that America was reborn. The United States has suffered several major terrorist attacks, and in response the government has seized absolute control on the country and reverted to a Christian fundamentalist theocracy. The government maintains control of the populace through institutions such as the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano, as well as increased surveillance and the secret drugging of tap water with a mild sedative. In response to the increasing oppression of the government, several corporate, government, and subversive websites were transported back in time to the present by a group of scientists working clandestinely against the authoritarian government. The websites-from-the-future were sent to the year 2007 to warn the American people of the impending dystopian future and to prevent it from ever forming in the first place.
The Year Zero game consisted of an expansive series of websites, phone numbers, e-mails, videos, MP3s, murals, and other media that expanded upon the fictional storyline of the album. Each new piece of media contained various hints and clues to discover the next, relying on fan participation to discover each new facet of the expanding game. Rolling Stone described the fan involvement in this promotion as the "marketing team's dream". Reznor, however, argued that "marketing" was an inaccurate description of the game, and that it was "not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a recordit is the art form".
Part of this promotional campaign involved USB drives that were left in concert venues for fans to find during Nine Inch Nails' 2007 European tour. During a concert in Lisbon, Portugal, a USB flash drive was found in a bathroom stall containing a high-quality MP3 of the track "My Violent Heart", a song from the then-unreleased album. Another USB drive was found at a concert in Barcelona, Spain, containing the track "Me, I'm Not". Messages found on the drives and tour clothing led to additional websites and images from the game, and the early release of several unheard songs from the album. Following the discovery of the USB drives, the high-quality audio files quickly circulated the internet. Owners of websites hosting the files soon received cease and desist orders from the Recording Industry Association of America, despite Interscope having sanctioned the viral campaign and the early release of the tracks. Reznor told The Guardian: