Broken is the first EP and second major release by the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. It was released on September 22, 1992, by Nothing, TVT, and Interscope Records. The EP was produced by frontman Trent Reznor and Flood.

The release consists entirely of new material and replaces the synth-pop style of the band's 1989 debut album Pretty Hate Machine with a considerably heavier sound that would act as a precursor to their second album The Downward Spiral (1994). Its lyrical themes are in line with those of their succeeding work. The record was promoted with music videos for five of the eight songs which were censored due to their violent content, as well as a short film of the same name, which was never officially released, but was later leaked as a bootleg.

Broken received positive reviews from critics and reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200 chart, eventually receiving a platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The recording helped to propel Nine Inch Nails into mainstream popularity, and later received two Grammy Awards (both for Best Metal Performance) for the songs "Wish" and "Happiness in Slavery".

Background After the commercial and critical success of Pretty Hate Machine (1989), TVT Records, the first record label to sign the band, pressured Trent Reznor to record a very similar album in the hope that it would have similarly successful singles. Steve Gottlieb, the CEO of TVT Records, was insistent that he would not release anything other than an album very similar to Pretty Hate Machine. Reznor demanded his label terminate his contract, due to their restriction of his creative control of the Nine Inch Nails project. They ignored his plea.

Reznor then objected to the label's attempted interference with his intellectual property. This much-publicized feud with TVT led Reznor to use a variety of monikers for the production of his next studio release. Reznor later said that he hated TVT, in part due to their classification of Nine Inch Nails as a synth-pop band. He reached a deal with the record label Interscope Records:

We made it very clear we were not doing another record for TVT. But they made it pretty clear they weren't ready to sell. So I felt like, well, I've finally got this thing going but it's dead. Flood and I had to record Broken under a different band name, because if TVT found out we were recording, they could confiscate all our shit and release it. Jimmy Iovine got involved with Interscope, and we kind of got slave-traded. It wasn't my doing. I didn't know anything about Interscope. And I was real pissed off at him at first because it was going from one bad situation to potentially another one. But Interscope went into it like they really wanted to know what I wanted. It was good, after I put my raving lunatic act on.

Recording

After July 1992, Trent Reznor used as a recording studio the location 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles, where American actress Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson family in 1969. Reznor renamed the location as "Le Pig" where he set up a recording studio to record the tracks of Broken and Nine Inch Nails' second studio album, The Downward Spiral (1994). In December 1993, Reznor was confronted by Patti Tate, who asked if he was exploiting her sister's death in the house. He later recalled this encounter during a 1997 interview with Rolling Stone:

Reznor secretly made Broken without an official title and while working under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference."Nine Inch Nails". Musician. March 1994. The record underwent development at six different studios, Hell (New Orleans, Louisiana), Royal Recorders at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, South Beach Studios at Miami, Florida; Village Recorder and A&M Studios at Los Angeles, California, and Le Pig at Beverly Hills, California. The last two studios were later used during the production process for The Downward Spiral (1994). Tom Baker mastered the EP at Futuredisc. Following this step, Reznor presented the recording to Interscope Records in September 1992, and signed to the record label, making Broken Nine Inch Nails' major label debut.

English record producer Flood, who produced the first two tracks on Pretty Hate Machine returned to work in 1992 on the EP for "Wish", "Last" and "Gave Up". As Reznor explained in retrospect: "Broken [...] had a lot of the super-thick chunk sound, and almost every guitar sound on that record was [tapes consisting of] me playing through an old Zoom pedal and then going direct into Digidesign's TurboSynth [software in a Macintosh computer]. Then I used a couple of key ingredients to make it [be heard as being] unlike any 'real' sound."

The instrumental break of "Physical" (at 3:49) features a half-speed recording of barking by Reznor's dog Maise, barking and biting recording engineer Sean Beavan, who exclaimed "Ow!...fucker!". Maise was credited with "barks and roars" in the liner notes as a result. After being owned by Reznor for over three years, Maise died after falling from a three-story balcony during the Self Destruct Tour.

Music and lyrics Heavier than Pretty Hate Machine, Broken takes influences from industrial metal bands such as Ministry and Skinny Puppy. There are louder mixes and more distortion on every instrument, including John Lennon's Mellotron MKII 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.

Reznor explained: "Pretty Hate Machine was written from the point of view of someone who felt that the world may suck, but I like myself as a person and I can fight my way out of this bullshit. Broken introduced self-loathing, which is not a popular topic with anybody, especially in a song." The lyrics are a critique of society, the majority of its themes involving angst, control and dependency struggles. The second promotional 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."These lines are misinterpreted in the inclusion of lyrics inside the packaging Clocking at roughly one minute, "Pinion" is one of the shortest Nine Inch Nails songs. It 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 promotional singles released 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.Broken (Interscope Records/Nothing Records/TVT Records, September 22, 1992) digipak artwork. "Suck" was written by Pigface, whose ever-changing lineup once included Reznor.

Packaging and artwork

Broken was originally packaged in a trifold-out digipak, containing the six tracks on a regular compact disc and an additional three-inch mini CD with the two remaining songs, covers of Adam and the Ants' "Physical" and Pigface's "Suck". Due to the high cost of producing a two-disc EP, only 250,000 copies were released with the mini CD, subsequently Broken was re-released as one CD in October 1992, having the bonus songs heard on tracks 98 and 99 respectively, without any visual notice except for the credits, and tracks 7–97 each containing one second of silence.Three seconds per track on the UK release, four seconds per track on the Germany release (Track 96 runs 7 seconds). The cassette release featured tracks 1–6 on side one, with "Physical" and "Suck" appearing at the tail end of side two, after approximately 15 minutes of silence. The United Kingdom vinyl release was pressed onto a one sided 12" that featured the six main tracks. The two bonus cuts were issued on a 7-inch single given away inside the EP in a white die-cut sleeve (an unusual method for packaging an album on the vinyl format).

All copies include the logo of Nothing Records, a first for the works of Reznor, making the EP itself Nothing's first release. The vanity label was founded by Reznor along with John Malm Jr., who was his manager at the time, when he had involvement in a feud with TVT Records. It had a short lifespan (Nothing Records existed for nearly 15 years); the label was created in 1992, as Reznor signed to Interscope before TVT entered into a joint venture with that major record label, where he mailed parts culled from his publishing rights to TVT Music, in exchange for the freedom of having his own imprint.Huxley, Martin (September 1997). Nine Inch Nails: Self Destruct. St. Martin's Press. .

The influence of Reznor's conflict with his former label, TVT, is evident in multiple aspects of the EP. After a long list of credits, the packaging reads, "no thanks: you know who you fucking are" followed by "the slave thinks he is released from bondage only to find a stronger set of chains."Broken (Interscope Records/nothing/TVT, September 22, 1992) vinyl artwork. These comments are likely directed towards TVT Records' Steve Gottlieb, who refused to let Reznor out of his contract, sparking legal battles between the two parties. The "no thanks" part may be a reference to the liner notes of Ministry's Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs album, which featured a cryptic "no thanks, you know who you are."Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs, Sire Records/Warner Bros., July 14, 1992, booklet; liner notes Aurally, at the beginning of "Physical", Reznor whispers, "eat your heart out, Steve." Visually, in a music video for "Gave Up", the monitor of a Mac computer running Pro Tools reads "fuck you steve".

Despite the addition of "no thanks: you know who you fucking are", there is a "Thank You" section. People listed in that portion include Jimmy Iovine, Ros Earles, Island Records, Eric Greenspan, Rick Rubin, Joe Mcewen, Seymour Stein, Susie Tallman, Mark O'Shea, Ian Copeland, Kevin Westenberg and Sheroa Rees-Davies.

The writing credit for "Suck" caused a minor controversy. While Pigface albums list all contributors to each of the songs, in this case, "Atkins/Rieflin/Barker/Reznor"Gub (Invisible Records, 1991) liner notes; "Suck". as listed on Gub, the credit on Broken states "written by t. reznor/pigface". On the later Pigface release, Truth Will Out, the writing credit for the song is: "whatever trent says – really – no shit".

Release and reception

"It's heavy", wrote Danny Scott in Select, "it's loud and it'll rip your stinkin' head from your shoulders if you so much as breathe without permission." "Beats are hammered home with the gleeful force of a dentist's drill", said Peter Kane in Q, "while layers of rabid guitars and Reznor's spiteful voice pile on the nihilistic agony."Q, December 1992 "Reznor has shaken off the shackles of influence", observed NME, "and found his own suitably idiosyncratic niche."NME, date unknown "Like a harrowing rape account", marveled Making Music, "it's an intensely vicious and shocking 30 minutes."Making Music, date unknown