Online only: New meaning to Downward Spiral

In less than a year, Trent Reznor has released his remix album of Year Zero just like Further Down the Spiral was released after The Downward Spiral in the mid '90s.\nIf you were expecting Reznor to recreate the magic of FDtS you're going to be let down. FDtS was remixed by Reznor himself to be what he felt Downward Spiral should have been. Y34RZ3r0r3mix3d is basically the same songs from Year Zero remixed by bands and artists such as The Faint, Kronos, New Order, and Saul Williams - many which have nothing close to the same musical sounds as Nine Inch Nails.\nThe result is a collection of electronic and disco tracks, with some hip hop flavor mixed in. Basically, everything that Reznor stood against when he began creating music is now what his songs have been turned into. While there are some tracks that stand out and still have that NIN aura, the rest sound like everything but Reznor, with almost no similarity to what you would imagine of a Nine Inch Nails track. However, a lot of this could be due to the fact once Trent Reznor got sober his music got somber.\nWhile the album itself isn't amazing, there is a redeeming feature. Reznor was able to convince Universal (the owners of his works) to release a DVD full of the master tracks to Year Zero in various formats for Mac and PC so that the fans can remix the tracks themselves. Reznor has even offered to host the remixes on his site so they can be downloaded by other fans. While this has caused some legal hassles with Universal, Reznor has always been a fan of innovation. It will be interesting to see if the next "Reznor" is out among the masses.