Nine Inch Nails - My Violent Heart | nin.wiki (2024)

"My Violent Heart" is the eighth track and was the first song to leak from the 2007 release Year Zero. Multitracks for this song were released in raw WAV, GarageBand and Ableton Live formats via remix.nin.com.

World of Year Zero reference

This has lyrics from MVH. Most likely MVH is about this particular World of Year Zero character.

The 'Presence' Reference

An amazing discovery was made while analyzing the content of the leaked MP3. In the last few seconds of the song there is an awkward bit of static. Running the audio file through an audio spectrometer, a distinct image was found within the static. It is indeed "The Presence" from the Year Zero concept. In the album version of the song, the static and image are not present. They are at the end of The Warning.

Leak

At the February 12th, 2007 Nine Inch Nails concert in Lisbon, Portugal, a plain-looking USB flash drive was found in a bathroom stall. It was later found to hold a single MP3 file with the title "My Violent Heart". The numeric sequence "24.3.2" was found within the MP3's ID3 tag of the leaked copy.

Appearances

Halos

• Year Zero
• Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D

Versions

My Violent Heart

This is the album version of the song. It begins with looping percussion and vocals soon enter. Just before the chorus, a synthesizer plays as a climax builds. The chorus contains mechanical and robotic noises layered in a very industrial way, creating a very rhythmic wall of sound. The bridge of the song contains guitar parts that have been heavily edited and chopped up. The song's drum pattern is very similar to that of "God Given". These beats are sampled from Atom Heart's Rather Interesting World Of Digital Drums sample library by Atomizer™.

My Violent Heart (Instrumental)

Running Time: 4:24

This unmastered vocal-less mix was released by Trent Reznor through his remix.nin.com account.

My Violent Heart (Leak Version)

This version of the song has the static at the end of the song, revealing "The Presence".

My Violent Heart: PRM Dance Mix

Running Time: 2:34

This fan mix by Pirate Robot Midget was initially posted at NIN Remixes and can be heard on Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D. It contains a more dance-oriented beat than the album original and has a considerably shorter running time than the album original. Interestingly enough, the version that appears on Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D has some sound elements not heard in the original remix, the most noticeable of which is a beeping noise heard in the background. This sound is almost reminiscent of an ECG (electrocardiograph) machine commonly found in hospitals.

Song Credits

• Remix and additional production by Pirate Robot Midget at Fakefriends Studio, Netherlands

Live

"My Violent Heart" has never been played live, the only Year Zero song with vocals to have not been performed.

Lyrics

 You and I we may look the same But we are very far apart There's bullet holes where my compassion used to be And there is violence in my heart Into fire you can send us From the fire we return You can label us a consequence Of how much you have to learn You can try but you'll never understand This is something you will never understand Can you hear it now? Hear it coming now? Can you hear it now? On hands and knees We crawl You can not stop us all You wear our bones Our skin We will not let you in You have set something in motion Much greater than you've ever known Standing there in all your grand naïveté About to reap what you have sown Time will feed upon your weaknesses And soon you'll lose the will to care When you return to the place that you call home We will be there We will be there On hands and knees We crawl You can not stop us all Our blood Will stay We will not go away On hands and knees We crawl You can not stop us all Our blood Our grace Will never leave this place

The fourth line of the first chorus is shortened in the actual recording:

 Our bones