NINE INCH NAILS — Broken (review)

EP · 1992 · Industrial Metal

3.5/5 · 2017-09-09
voila_la_scorie

Divorce can be a funny thing. Back in the 90’s, I was married to a woman who was into dance pop and Celtic folk music and I was into metal, hard rock, and alternative. The Celtic folk was nice but I could not be thrilled about dance pop. As our divorce proceedings were coming to an end, we met up just to discuss a few minor things. She told me she had gotten into Nine Inch Nails. What a coincidence since I had recently discovered them for myself. She liked NIN for the dance-like beats and aggression and I liked them for the heavy stuff and aggression. Probably we didn’t like the same albums or songs though.

“Broken” was my third and final NIN purchase. It sounded very different from what I had heard on “The Downward Spiral” and “Further Down the Spiral” but it was still obviously Nine Inch Nails. Around that time, there was a video for “Pinion” that I saw on Much Music (Canada’s music station). In the video, the camera followed a series of pipes running across the ceiling and down walls, through floors, in some building and the final scene brought us to a person tied up in black leather with the pipe terminating in his mouth and water spewing from his mouth out the sides. It’s just a short track and an instrumental at that. The volume slowly rises with a creepy chord sequence that repeats as effects come in. Then it abruptly ends as “Wish” begins with its quick percussion and heavy guitar. “Last” was and still is my favourite song on this album. The guitar riffs sound really like Black Sabbath to me, and Trent Reznor delivers his trademark paranoid/maniacal/obsessive style of vocals.

I hadn’t listened to the album for a long time but a few weeks ago I watched the Lock Horns (on YouTube) episode about early industrial metal albums and this one was mentioned, so I dug it out and put the disc into iTunes and on my phone. It’s better than I remembered. Now I find most of the album captures my attention. The production is clear, warm, and loud but not in the red. There is an excellent balance between heavy guitar rock band and electronic band. Some songs feature some great riffs that caught my ear while I was walking and listening, tracks like “Happiness is Slavery” and “Suck”. There’s enough variety on this album to keep it interesting, though “Help Me I Am In Hell” is another short instrumental that is simple and a little repetitive.

One comment to make here is about the two hidden tracks, “Physical (You’re So)” and “Suck”. A lot of hidden track albums will put the hidden track on as part of the final track with an intervening empty gap that can be anywhere from a couple of minutes to over ten minutes. I really despise those long pointless gaps of blankety-blank-blankness. However, on “Broken” all the empty space is filled with something like 91 1-second-long blank tracks. Why is this good? Because when putting the CD into an iTunes library, you can unselect all the blank tracks and save only the tracks with music. My iTunes folder now has only 8 music files for this album instead of eight plus 91-something blank tracks. Good thinking, guys! A huge blank gap in between two tracks that make up only one track on the CD is really the pits!

All in all, a very good bit of industrial metal. It's not every track that's a killer but there's a lot of great stuff here! On Lock Horns, by the way, the album made the list of ten essential early industrial metal albums.

more than 2 years ago
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voila_la_scorie wrote:

more than 2 years ago

It's funny because I've never bought a NIN album since.

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Good review. I'm not a huge fan of NIN, but I love this one. I agree about the blank tracks, I do not get what the obsession was with those back in the 90's.