(((withoutsound)))

Trent Reznor is many things. And apparently one of those things is an ingenious viral marketer. The newest studio album from Nine Inch Nails, Year Zero, isn’t due until April 17th (this year’s Tax Day!), but Trent’s been hypin’ it for weeks.According to Wikipedia:

On February 12, 2007, fans found that a new NIN tour T-shirt contained highlighted letters that spell out the words “I am trying to believe.” It was discovered that iamtryingtobelieve.com was registered as a website, and soon several related websites were found in the IP range, all describing a dystopian vision of the world fifteen years in the future. Many events reported on these websites take place in the year “0000″.

Additional promotional efforts have included the placement of USB drives which contained images, and mp3 files of music and static. Spectrogram analysis of the static uncovered phone numbers and additional images which have led fans to more websites and more clues.

Reznor’s promotional efforts for an album that he has said “could be about the end of the world, and [marks] a ‘shift in direction’ in that it doesn’t sound like With Teeth,” can best be described as the LOST Experience for industrial rock fans. On top of that, Trent is apparently in talks to turn his yet to be released album into a movie.

Will it all be worth it? I guess we’ll find out four weeks from today.

In the meantime, here are the three tracks that have been leaked.

• Listen to Survivalism
• Listen to Me, I’m Not
• Listen to My Violent Heart