Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The classic EP, January 14, 2006
When Nine Inch Nail's debut album "Pretty Hate Machine" (1989) was first released, it was greeted with little fanfare or commotion. Over time, however, through word-of-mouth, the album caught on. In the early 90s it became an underground and college favorite. Through constant touring and the emergence of the popularity of alternative rock in the early 90s, Nine Inch Nails started to take off. While fans eagerly awaited Trent Reznor's proper follow-up, they eagerly devoured the stop-gap EP "Broken" (1992).
While "Pretty Hate Machine" went for straight-forward industrial beats, "Broken" is far heavier, more aggressive, with more guitars. While the club/techno crowd may have been more receptive to the debut, "Broken" is an EP that would just as likely appeal to metal fans. Equal parts metal and industrial beats, "Broken" can be seen as a prelude, or a sneak preview of what Reznor would unveil two years later with his masterpiece "The Downward Spiral" (1994).
Clocking in slightly past the half-hour mark, with eight songs (two tracks are hidden, two are instrumentals) "Broken" is pretty short. But the EP is so angry, so aggressive, with no reprieve; the shortness in length probably works for the best.
"Broken" features the NIN classics and concert staples, "Wish," "Gave Up," and (the hidden track) "Suck." The lesser known "Last," "Happiness in Slavery," and a cover of Adam Ant's "Physical" (also hidden) are no less memorable. Instrumentals "pinion" and "Help me I am in Hell" help round out the CD.
Back in 1992 when CDs were relatively new to consumers, having ninety-one silent, second-long tracks separate the final two songs from the first six may have been cool and inventive. Now, however, it seems kind of pointless. Still, it's no big deal.
If you are a fan of NIN, "Broken" is just as essential to own as any of the studio albums.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, almost compelling, November 9, 1999
By A Customer
I must admit that I am not your average industrial metal rock fan, having grown up with Hendrix and the Doors and pushing 50. I picked up NIN's "Broken" on a whim in a drugstore sale bin and I can barely believe how this music has taken a grip on me. I love cranking it up on the commute home from work. It has a way of clearing out the mental cobwebs that no other music even comes close to. Some hear anger in this stuff. I hear a destructive, apocalyptic joy strangely combined with rage. It makes me want to scream, not in anger but in raw exhultation, a kind of celebration of being alive even though trapped in career and suburbia - true "Happiness in Slavery".
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fire, Steel, Carnage, and Pure Genius, April 14, 2002
By A Customer
This album hits your serotonin receptors like an atom bomb. It's damn near impossible to listen to this whole thing without rocking out to the beat or singing (screaming) along. Genevieve Williams describes it as a placeholder. It's not. It grinds Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral into the dust with blasting guitar noises and soul-wrenching rhythms. It's all the quality of a normal-length CD concetrated into an EP.No, I'm not a sales rep, but if you're even considering buying this album, you want it. You've been needing it for years to fill that empty gap in your life... You know, that gap a lot of us tried to stuff with trite nu-metal garbage and jerking off... "Broken" is a confrontation with the naked id -- an album for a dysphoric world, for beautiful destruction, for screaming at the top of your lungs at everything and nothing, for fear, for angst, and somehow -- for hope. Even as galaxies collide, supernovas explode, and the universe shatters, there is a phoenix hidden in the flames on the album cover. When we have reached the bottom, there is nowhere to go but up. ...Alright, maybe I'm over-dramatizing. Maybe I *am* a sales rep =). Maybe Trent Reznor is just trying to capitalize on a vast teenage market of angst-turned-commercialism. Nonetheless, this is still the perfect album for when you're angry, upset, depressed, or confused like so many of us are. Works better than prescription medication. Reznor may repeat many of the same self-destructive themes in his songs, but guess what? So do we in life. "Broken" brings to consciousness that relentless voice inside our heads that tells us to screw everything and just let it all out. By the time I'm done listening, I have nothing left to vent. More to the point, if you enjoy loud, engaging, sonorous mayhem, this album is for you. I consider it Reznor's best work to date. Listen. Rage. Repeat.
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