Add Violence Back Cover...ARG?

[sick among the pure]

I'm so excited to get into all of this, as I never had anything to do with the YZ stuff (and being from New Zealand, couldn't have done much anyway)!
With the previous things like this, was it mainly around visual clues, or were there also clues imbedded in things?
I thought I may have been onto something with the AV front cover, with the GPS co-ords and all of the metadata. Nothing like that in the back cover though.

Honestly, the best way to learn about the YZ ARG is to read over this. Each website listing says how they were discovered.
Some things were visual clues, some things were imbedded, some things were "that website mentioned another website, or a phone number, let's try that and see OH SHIT THERE IS MORE!", some things were hidden in spectral analysis. There was a lot of shit going on.

[Hesitation_Marks]

I thought I may have been onto something with the AV front cover, with the GPS co-ords and all of the metadata. Nothing like that in the back cover though.

Well the back cover is uploaded to Twitter or another social media place and then you are saving that copy, at the point you're making a new file for your machine. If there's data attached to it like the Less Than cover than we won't know until we are sent the actual file.

[neorev]

So is there a place that collects all of the pieces of the Year Zero ARG? Ability to see all of the sites associated with it?

[Hesitation_Marks]

So is there a place that collects all of the pieces of the Year Zero ARG? Ability to see all of the sites associated with it?

NINwiki

[Toadflax]

Wow... someone used the numbers as GPS coordinates and it took them to a creepy ass van with the outline of a hand... a hand much like the 'presence'.

One hell of a coincidence!

Where on earth have you been???

[neorev]

NINwiki

But the sites themselves no longer exist? No one archived them? The links just got 42 Entertainment site. Sadly, you can't see the sites.

[sick among the pure]

But the sites themselves no longer exist? No one archived them? The links just got 42 Entertainment site. Sadly, you can't see the sites.

I believe the Internet Wayback Machine should be able to help you with that.

[kode_name]

also just noticed the back cover has the same mark as the edge of the NTAE cover:
http://imgur.com/amZYVIJ

[kiwistorm]

Honestly, the best way to learn about the YZ ARG is to read over this. Each website listing says how they were discovered.
Some things were visual clues, some things were imbedded, some things were "that website mentioned another website, or a phone number, let's try that and see OH SHIT THERE IS MORE!", some things were hidden in spectral analysis. There was a lot of shit going on.

Sweet - thanks for this. Looks like I'll be doing a lot of reading tonight!

[Hesitation_Marks]

I believe the Internet Wayback Machine should be able to help you with that.

I've honestly never heard of that. Just archived sites and such?

[|mando|]

I've honestly never heard of that. Just archived sites and such?

http://yearzero.netninja.com/mirrors/

[SuperNINtendo Chalmers]

And what a great fucking concept. An old analog looking machine that's simulating a post-apocalyptic world. Uhhh, that tingles me in all the right places.

Some might say it's a warning, others may say it's a sign?

[sick among the pure]

http://yearzero.netninja.com/mirrors/

I could never remember who mirrored the sites. I just always default to "website isn't up anymore? I'll check archive.org"

[Callahan]

Huge ass theory here that may not even matter here.


So let's see.

So far the EPs referenced these works from Trent Reznor

Down In It - Found In "Less Than" with "SHUT UP" being delivered in a samilliar way.

Reptile - Found in She's Gone Away with lyric from Reptile being in the lyrics sheet and The Downward Spiral being the background for the physical component

Still - Not The Actual Events Artwork

How To Destroy Angels - Referenced in "Burning Bright (Field On Fire) and "Less Than", Burning Bright includes a line "I can't tell if I am dreaming anymore" which can be also found HTDA'S "We Fade Away"

Less Than: "Welcome Oblivion"

Year Zero - Back of the cover art for Add Violence "The Presence"

The Deviants - Back of the cover art for Add Violence "Deviant"

Mr. Self Destruct - Back of the cover art for Add Violence "Self Destruct" (debatable, as the word can have a lot of meaning)

Pinion - Back of the cover art for Add Violence "Pinion"


This wold be very straight-forward Year Zero sequel, yet these references are pretty damn scary, what if this trilogy of EPs is about a man whom realizes his entire life was a lie and under control of a machine and these EPs are his path to realiazing that? Perhaps ran by goverment, most likely.

It does not seem to be centered on the world, but it seems like only an invidiual is being mind-controlled, no, not even that, he is not being mind-controlled, it seems he is literally strapped into a machine and being in some sort of simulation.

With this in mind, let's look at some lyrics and other things that seemed unclear now.

Branches/Bones has a chorus that states that the protagonist recongizes the place he is in, this could mean that the machine is making him go through the same journey and he starts realizing it.

Branches/Bones in the lyric sheet has bunch of words, in there you can find "Please go away from here" and "I don't think you're supposed to be reading this", this could mean that the protagonist is becoming aware that someone is watching him, his struggles, in this case, it being us, yet he is slowly looking into our world and he is directly adressing us.

Same for "Less Than" where 4th wall break happens in the lyrics sheet once again.


Dear World is very clear with its idea of being locked away, he bluntly tells us he is locked "inside of here" with people "who are not here, all the way" meaning all the relationships he ever had are fake, this puts the line "Yes, everyone seems to be asleep" into a different perspective, as it could be his way of saying "no one is real"

The Idea Of You, he starts recongizing the fakeness of the machine and tries to break free, yet there is another voice that tells him that he is only telling himself this

"NONE OF THIS IS HAPPENING" are his screams of terror, perhaps reminding himself that this is not real while the other voice is trying to keep him in check

Towards the end, he may be breaking the 4th wall once again, actually speaking to us.

Can you hear?
It gets so lonely in here

Burning Bright seems to indicate the realization that everything that happened (as in, entirety of NIN discography's story line I guess) was this stimulation and he is breaking from it....
....

but not really, due to the ending lines. This could point us to the fact that this is a loop.

"I can't tell if I am dreaming anymore"

He isn't really free, him being free, perhaps was a part of stimulation, he realizes this and then he ends up back at "Branches/Bones", he realizes that he was in this exact same place before.

I like this thought process! So, at some point, does he realize he's stuck in the machine and becomes content? and finds, Happiness In Slavery?

[GentlemanLoser]

Found a "K" floating around all by itself in the Less Than music video (not a part of the breaking apart lyrics, since it's when he sings "welcome oblivion"). Making the assumption it's connected to the K on the album art.
Probably nothing, but may as well mention it.

The K blocks are part of the Polybius videogame for PS4 that is used throughout the video. The version in the video is a slightly updated version (the guy who made the game is a NIN fan and when they approached him, he was happy to add Less Than lyrics to the game) running on a PC though.

I have the game (in VR no less, so that I can get *really* indoctrinated) and the K blocks (and ? blocks, and others) are a normal part of the game and probably just coincidental. Now the floating arms seen in the video? Those I have yet to actually encounter in the game...

[GentlemanLoser]

You know, reading through the transcript on http://www.nin.wiki/Solutions_Backwards_Initiative of the whole "sending the data back in time, thus creating all of the websites that we were reading as part of the ARG" stuff, I start to wonder about a few possibilities.

1.) Is the equipment we are seeing on the Add Violence cover art the equipment they were using as part of their tarpit experiment?

2.) Or...what if, while they thought their little experiment sent data back in time, what it actually did was send data out of the simulation into the "real world" where we all reside?

[Hesitation_Marks]

Dear World is very clear with its idea of being locked away, he bluntly tells us he is locked "inside of here" with people "who are not here, all the way" meaning all the relationships he ever had are fake, this puts the line "Yes, everyone seems to be asleep" into a different perspective, as it could be his way of saying "no one is real"

I always heard this song as more of a scating ode to social media myself.

"Pictures & Faces, all on display, of people who aren't here all the way"

^-- I agree with your "no one is real" notion, but I think it's because we are all so consumed by the being something for the sake of others; As soon as I heard the lyrics for Less Than I felt he was continuing this notion.

[cheddamash]

THE IDEAL WAY I’D HOPE A LISTENER EXPERIENCE MY MUSIC IS TO GRAB A GREAT SET OF HEADPHONES, SIT WITH THE VINYL, DROP THE NEEDLE, HOLD THE JACKET IN YOUR HANDS LOOKING AT THE ARTWORK ... AND GO ON A JOURNEY WITH ME.
-TRENT REZNOR

Oh! HERE'S that journey he was talking about. And we all thought he was talking about Deviations' artwork. /s

[Prettybrokenspiral]

REMEMBER WHEN RECORDS HAD BACK COVERS? NO? MAYBE THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT.

Apologies if this has been stated elsewhere already, but..

If this is the back cover we're dissecting, and the Less Than cover art is just the bottom right of the back cover, one can only wonder what the front cover of the EP is going to look like come this Friday. And will it offer any more further clues to what's unfolding..?

[cheddamash]

REMEMBER WHEN RECORDS HAD BACK COVERS? NO? MAYBE THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT.

Apologies if this has been stated elsewhere already, but..

If this is the back cover we're dissecting, and the Less Than cover art is just the bottom right of the back cover, one can only wonder what the front cover of the EP is going to look like come this Friday. And will it offer any more further clues to what's unfolding..?

The bottom right of the back cover is the front cover of Add Violence, the EP, not Less Than the song.

[Prettybrokenspiral]

Well that's lame. Why would you make the front cover of something a mere portion of the back cover?

[Substance242]

Now THIS is something to look at while listening to an album...

Apperception set to Oblivion, can be.

[Toadflax]

Well that's lame. Why would you make the front cover of something a mere portion of the back cover?

It's not that different from the front cover of a CD being a fraction of what you see when unfold the booklet (like with Green Day's Insomniac, for example). This might just be an LP practical way of doing that.

[Hesitation_Marks]

The bottom right of the back cover is the front cover of Add Violence, the EP, not Less Than the song.

We actually do not have 100% verification of this. "Less Than" is a single on Spotify and uses the supposed Cover you're speaking of. From an artistic perspective it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have 1 tiny portion of the back cover that seems to be less impactful than the entirety of the back cover to be the front cover of the album..

[Toadflax]

We actually do not have 100% verification of this. "Less Than" is a single on Spotify and uses the supposed Cover you're speaking of. From an artistic perspective it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have 1 tiny portion of the back cover that seems to be less impactful than the entirety of the back cover to be the front cover of the album..

But, but:

[d-signet]

The bottom right of the back cover is the front cover of Add Violence, the EP, not Less Than the song.

We don't know that.

The back cover is called "back_cover_less than.jpg"

It makes sense for something with a back cover to also have a front cover.

Whatever is displayed on the website might not be the final artwork.

We won't know until we have something in our hands.

[ninjaw]

So far, nothing told me that geotag isn't just a real geotag that TR forgot as he forgot capslock in id3tagv2. And K doesn't stand for @kraw

[Hesitation_Marks]

But, but:

Well... Shit, when you're right you're right.

[nindian]

Regarding the 'Add Violence' physical component, upping the contrast on the back cover image reveals the red component tucked away to the bottom right of the machine to be a booklet... maybe a manual of some kind or a kind of Year Zero Anarchist Cookbook-type thing?! That or maybe Laura Palmer's diary!

[Hesitation_Marks]

Regarding the 'Add Violence' physical component, upping the contrast on the back cover image reveals the red component tucked away to the bottom right of the machine to be a booklet... maybe a manual of some kind or a kind of Year Zero Anarchist Cookbook-type thing?! That or maybe Laura Palmer's diary!

I LITTERALLY just posted an higher contrast/exposure image of the supposed component on FB. Weird.