Broken (EP) - Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics

Heavier than Pretty Hate Machine, Broken obviously takes influences from heavy metal groups such as thrash metal champions Metallica, groove metal fathers Pantera, and industrial metal bands such as Ministry and Godflesh. There are louder mixes and more distortion on every instrument, including a classic Mellotron MKIV that was originally owned by The Beatles' deceased frontman John Lennon, heard most particularly on "Gave Up". Reznor said he wanted the album to be "an ultra-fast chunk of death" for the listener, something that would "make your ears a little scratchy". In the liner notes, Reznor credited the 1991 Nine Inch Nails touring band as an influence on the EP's sound.

The lyrics are a critique on society, the majority of its themes involve angst, control and dependency struggles. For example, the lyrics for "Happiness in Slavery" involve a nameless criminal, referred to in the song as "slave," who vandalizes crime policies at the risk of submission, and destroys security equipment. The second single from the EP, "Wish", includes the expletive fuck thrice, used on the lines "Now there's nothing more fucked up I could do," "I'm the one without this soul/I'm the one with this big fucking hole" and "Gotta listen to your big time hard line bad luck fist fuck."

Clocking at roughly 1 minute, "Pinion" is the shortest Nine Inch Nails song, in contrast to the longest song from the act, Further Down the Spiral (1995) track "Self Destruction, Final". Another achievement is found in Broken: At 288 beats per minute, "Gave Up" is the fastest Nine Inch Nails song ("Wish"'s tempo is 270 BPM), a record the opposite of the act's slowest song, the title track to The Downward Spiral, set in the 50 BPM range. "Pinion" features a series of short, ascending, distorted guitar power chords and a collage of atmospheric loops, including a reversed sample of David Bowie's "It's No Game" (which is not credited in the artwork for Broken). A portion of this is used as one of the guitar riffs in "Wish", one of the two commercially released singles from the album. "Help Me I Am in Hell," another instrumental, ends with another uncredited sample, this time from The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

There are two bonus songs, which follow 91 silent, one-second tracks (numbered 7 through 97) on most CD copies, but were included as a separate 3" CD or 7" record with early pressings. "Physical" is a cover of the Adam and the Ants song "Physical (You're So)", originally released on the Kings of the Wild Frontier LP." In 1995, Nine Inch Nails performed "Physical" live with Adam Ant for two nights in a row. After Reznor introduced Ant and Marco Pirroni on the second night, Ant proclaimed to the audience, "It's nice to be on stage with the best fucking band in the world." "Suck" was written by Pigface, whose ever-changing lineup once included Reznor. The slower, sparser, radically different original version appeared a year earlier on Pigface's Gub album. In live performances, Pigface usually plays a version similar to Nine Inch Nails' cover, as evident by the super-group's various live recordings like "Welcome to Mexico, Asshole" and "Glitch". However, their interpretation emphasizes the bass, de-emphasizes keyboards and computer effects, and lacks Reznor's "I am so dirty on the inside" break down. Reznor's version also does include Pigface's shout of "Suck! Suck! Suck!" after "How does it feel?", except it is faintly whispered on the cover version.