Nine Inch Nails Year Zero

Oh Trent Reznor, what’s in that head of yours? I guess we know a bit more after this very creative campaign.

From Digg:

Nine Inch Nails Concept Album Builds Story With Websites From The Future

A set of websites have emerged in support of the new Nine Inch Nails album “Year Zero“. The first of the sites was discovered by fans who noticed highlighted letters on the back of a nine inch nails shirt for a tour that kicked off this weekend. This led to the discovery of various IP addresses and an entire story of the future built through sites.

more: link

Here’s a screenshot I took of one of the websites, anotherversionofthetruth.com:

Looks innocuous enough, but go to the site and drag your mouse over the graphic and it changes to something else entirely.

Yesterday an mp3 was ‘found’ on a USB drive in Portugal where the band was playing. Here is “Violence in my Heart”:

Interestingly, when viewed through the spectrum analyzer in the Fruity Loops program the noise at the end of the song creates an eerie picture of a hand reaching downward:

There are other websites and marketing materials to explore as well but it would take me hours and pages of writing to cover exactly what others have found so far. If you want to explore further check out the often updated forum post at echoing the sound.

Wow. I love viral marketing especially the calculated and artistic depth of campaigns such as this one. Having done some myself I can tell you there’s more coming for sure and these folks had tons of fun putting this together. A dream gig would be to do this kind of thing full time. I’m brewing a little something of my own right now. *wink wink*

Oh, one last thing on this. There’s a phone number (1-310-295-1040) you can call to here a creepy phone message if you like, but I’ll save you the long distance charges. Here’s the message (NOTE – It contains some not safe for work language):

I will buy this CD as I always buy NiN stuff, but this one seems to have earned my cash a bit more. I can’t wait until they come around on tour so we can see them.