Year Zero and brief reflections on identity.
Year Zero is amazing.
I came into enjoying NIN on my sister's coattails. Mindy has always had better taste than I have, and she has ultimately lead me into many of my favorite bands. I got drawn into NIN when she did, with The Fragile. Well, maybe that's a lie. I hated NIN for years. Too discordant, too everywhere and nowhere, too reliant on contiguous themes inside an album etc.
Listen to something you hate long enough, and you'll learn to appreciate it, especially with bands that are acquired tastes. In time, I transitioned from a callous youth to a contemplative not-so-youth, and with that, a better appreciation of music developed.
That being said, Year Zero is amazing.
My first NIN album, as I said, was The Fragile. In all honestly, Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, and The Downward Spiral I haven't listened to that much. I recently downloaded The Fragile. I like it a lot, but sometimes it seems to be too "dirty" sounding. With Teeth, as the NIN album in transition, started to produce a cleaner sound, and started to introduce more adult intellectual themes. Shit that only comes with age, with adulthood. Trent is essentially the last horse to cross the finish line on adulthood. Of course, maybe it takes that long for everyone, but thats for another time.
The sound is all blacks and whites, perfectly clean. Thematically, it's concepts and ideas that are more cerebral than emotional, but its still very deeply visceral at the same time.
Even his lyrics had improved, and he's throwing in a lot of creative stuff musically. And I really love the apocalyptic tenor of the whole thing. By the end of the album, you're questioning the worth of your own existence.
Year Zero+Killer7+Ghost in the Shell= How arrogant do we as humans have to be to claim that we are individual? That we have a unique identity? Who the hell are we anyway? Self definition is meaningless, mostly because it only matters to one person. You could characterize a person's complete personality in sentences, and we act like we are so complex and meaningful.
In all actuality, we don't mean shit. I think we should stop acting like it. We need to be more real.
Year Zero is amazing.
Also, the off-beatedness of the whole work has an amazing effect.
I came into enjoying NIN on my sister's coattails. Mindy has always had better taste than I have, and she has ultimately lead me into many of my favorite bands. I got drawn into NIN when she did, with The Fragile. Well, maybe that's a lie. I hated NIN for years. Too discordant, too everywhere and nowhere, too reliant on contiguous themes inside an album etc.
Listen to something you hate long enough, and you'll learn to appreciate it, especially with bands that are acquired tastes. In time, I transitioned from a callous youth to a contemplative not-so-youth, and with that, a better appreciation of music developed.
That being said, Year Zero is amazing.
My first NIN album, as I said, was The Fragile. In all honestly, Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, and The Downward Spiral I haven't listened to that much. I recently downloaded The Fragile. I like it a lot, but sometimes it seems to be too "dirty" sounding. With Teeth, as the NIN album in transition, started to produce a cleaner sound, and started to introduce more adult intellectual themes. Shit that only comes with age, with adulthood. Trent is essentially the last horse to cross the finish line on adulthood. Of course, maybe it takes that long for everyone, but thats for another time.
The sound is all blacks and whites, perfectly clean. Thematically, it's concepts and ideas that are more cerebral than emotional, but its still very deeply visceral at the same time.
Even his lyrics had improved, and he's throwing in a lot of creative stuff musically. And I really love the apocalyptic tenor of the whole thing. By the end of the album, you're questioning the worth of your own existence.
Year Zero+Killer7+Ghost in the Shell= How arrogant do we as humans have to be to claim that we are individual? That we have a unique identity? Who the hell are we anyway? Self definition is meaningless, mostly because it only matters to one person. You could characterize a person's complete personality in sentences, and we act like we are so complex and meaningful.
In all actuality, we don't mean shit. I think we should stop acting like it. We need to be more real.
Year Zero is amazing.
Also, the off-beatedness of the whole work has an amazing effect.