Bleak but worthy look at the future

Nine Inch Nails' latest album Year Zero is the band's first concept album.

Don't expect any of the 16 tracks to be easy-listening tunes.

'It certainly doesn't sound like anything else out there right now,' said Trent Reznor, the founder and primary creative force behind the band. It sounds more like a soundtrack for an apocalyptic sci-fi film.

The album opens fittingly with Hyperpower!, an instrumental track that builds to a climactic frenzy and then just stops, as if everything in the world had suddenly ceased to exist.

It concludes with Zero Sum which, thanks to a sombre piano part and mournful chants ('May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts'), sounds like a performance by a choir of zombies.

In between, the songs are gloomy, dark, complex, noisy and unconventional works.