Pitchfork Forkcast: New Music: Nine Inch Nails: "Survivalism" [Stream]

New Music: Nine Inch Nails: "Survivalism" [Stream]

Last week we learned that "My Violent Heart", the first taste from Nine Inch Nails' upcoming album Year Zero, is said to have leaked after someone found it on a jump drive in a men's room stall at a Lisbon concert, most likely right after a Trent Reznor power-dump. Now comes "Survivalism", the first proper single from Year Zero-- presumably found on a watermarked CDR stumbled onto by the head of Interscope Records somewhere inside the Universal Music Group branch of the Pentagon.

The track strips the drums out of "March of the Pigs" and throws weird, clunky stops into the beat. It's an unusual premiere single, but as usual, Reznor's meticulous production work (markedly inspired lately by the DFA) is sadly buried under more of the same shitty temper-tantrum choruses found in pretty much every NIN single ever.

The lyrics, meanwhile, still haven't evolved beyond Pretty Hate Machine's brooding journal entries, here having something to do with the "dystopian future" that the album's viral marketing campaign ominously alludes to. So basically, it's down to a science-- as long as there's beedis, the Matrix Trilogy, and high school, there's a job for Nine Inch Nails.

Stream: > Nine Inch Nails: "Survivalism" [Windows Media]
[from Year Zero; due 04/27/07 on Interscope]