Trent Reznor has milked grand musical miles out of his simple idea. Ever since 1989’s “Pretty Hate Machine” Reznor has combined metal and dance music to make Nine Inch Nails into pop rock. Yes, he typically favors the darker territory — goth metal, industrial beats, and the lyrical gloom associated with both — but as his equally thrilling and frustrating new “Year Zero” (Universal Japan) makes clear, his ability to craft music that speaks to listeners’ inner loner makes his art peculiarly invigorating.

Right now, though, Mr. Reznor’s viral marketing campaign has generated most of his current buzz. Starting with a hidden message on a European concert T-shirt that led to a series of online wild goose chases, “Year Zero” is the focus of roiling waves of online debate. USB drives with new songs were left in European concert-venue bathrooms, and in the past few weeks the album has leaked to the Internet more times than a quasi-celebrity’s sex tape. The general theory is that “Year Zero” is a concept album about a dystopian, totalitarian future in which humans are faced with extinction as a consequence of their own poor choices — maybe. Wading through the message-board posts, blog speculations, and music Web site tidbits gets pointless quickly and begins to feel more like calculated misdirection.

Besides, it’s not like fear, paranoia, obsession, and anxiety are new themes to Mr. Reznor. What makes great Nine Inch Nails music is his ability to thread his musical and lyrical impulses into pop songs that are ripe with seductive unknowns. NIN at its best makes the uncomfortable sexy and the sexy uncomfortable.

Mr. Reznor aims for just that through the 16 songs on “Year Zero,” which is out this week. From the anthemlike instrumental opener “Hyperpower!” to the smeared beats and glitches abstractly punctuating the downer finale “Zero-Sum,” Mr. Reznor has sculpted a daftly jittery album. It’s much messier than 2005’s sterile “With Teeth,” which makes for a more tense and engaging listen. It’s an album in which one can get lost when listening through headphones, as obstinately dense as a Hank Shocklee production.

Credit that discombobulated energy to Mr. Reznor’s ear for wobbly electronic beats culled from the past decade of niche-market dance music. Lead single “Survivalism” — a jack-booted run through every man-for-himself environmental desperation that finds Mr. Reznor sing-speaking, “She asked to take my hand / I turned, just keep on walking / But you’d do the same thing under circumstance I’m sure you’ll understand” — makes strange bedfellows of a serrated guitar line and a liquidly pulsating drum ‘n’ bass spine. The song begins with a repetitive staccato bass track over which Mr. Reznor layers the guitar punch, then a disorienting electronic hum, and finally an insistent drum pummel and midrange siren buzz in the chorus. The result is a curious mix of rock’s forward momentum and creep-scene production touches that melts into a radio sing-along.

“Survivalism” is far from the best song on the album, and it spotlights Mr. Reznor’s inconsistency. His sharp pop impulses too often polish his baser instincts, which would let his inner loner soar to better — and bitter — heights. His ability to shape abstract dance ideas into radio-accessible pop is breathtaking — “My Violent Heart” and “God Given” squeak out of an Autechre-fractured assembly of clicks and cuts, “Vessel” bubbles forth out of a barrage of Ryoji Ikeda claustrophobic electronic tones and hisses — but the songs never congeal into the sort of awkward mind- and body-engulfing swells that mark NIN’s strongest moments.

Mr. Reznor gets better results out of tangling his devilish beats around more traditional metal moments. Thick, hook-laden guitar snarls invest both “The Good Soldier” and “The Warning” with a stalking menace, lending the shellshocked funky drums of “Soldier” and the zoned-out trance tapestry of “Warning” a palpable discomfort.

And that unease is key — without it, Mr. Reznor’s throbbing music feels too much like the Chemical Brothers’ all-night party. Spectral keyboards, haunting percussions, and Mr. Reznor’s hushed voice sketch a moody tension through “The Greater Good,” but the evillove vibe is provided by the intestinal reverberations of the subterranean bass line.

Best of all, in “Vessel” Mr. Reznor makes outright noise — slowed and chopped up, though, as if heard underwater — into a nervous glam stunner about mental instability. As a dyspeptic synthesizer belches the schizophrenic beat, a percussive ripple upsets the regular pulse and a distorted guitar line interrupts everything every so often. Over this apprehension, Mr. Reznor’s sparse lyrics trace a story of violation (“I let you put it in my veins / I let you take me from within”) becoming internal rationalization (“I have finally found my place in everything / I have finally found my home”) that flowers into outright delusion (“I’m becoming something else / I am turning into God”). Like the best music Nine Inch Nails has made, it’s melodramatic angst you can dance to.