Album: Nine Inch Nails

Year Zero is the first of a projected two-part concept album loosely based on the theme of a dystopian police-state America 15 years in the future - an idea placing Trent Reznor firmly in the tradition of sci-fi politico-rockers like Canadian metal trio Rush and French art-rockers Magma, whose conception involved creating a new language. No such exertions for Reznor, whose energies may have been directed more towards the stealth marketing used to promote the album - flash-drives of music left in toilets at NIN gigs, coded online treasure-hunts - than to the story, which involves the usual peering into the abyss before deciding that life is awful. Which I concede may be the case if "there's bullet holes where my compassion used to be". Musically, Reznor claims the sample-montages of Public Enemy's Bomb Squad as the main influence, but these tracks are nowhere near as shocking, relying on his trademark industrial-rock tools: drums like steam hammers, guitars like the foul offspring of chainsaw and bulldozer, and very quiet verses that build to screamy-shouty choruses about cool Goth things like apathy, aliens, telepathy and murder.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'My Violent Heart', 'The Greater Good', 'Vessel'