‘Another Version of the Truth’: The politics of affect and the externalization of threat in Trent Reznor’s Year Zero

Abstract

This article explores Nine Inch Nails’ album Year Zero (2007) with reference to what Brian Massumi calls the ‘politics of affect’ in the post 9/11 era. The sociopolitical discourse of managed threat both contextualizes and shapes the album’s conceptual basis, but also its lyricism, live manifestation and marketing. I propose a trajectory in Trent Reznor’s lyricism from an early introspective and confessional style to defensive and anxious tropes, emotions within a structure of feeling synonymous with the post 9/11 years. I argue that the album is a document that both reflects and critiques the overlapping social, cultural and political arenas of this era, and was particularly responsive to neoconservative discourse in its delivery, accompanying media and live performance.