The Nine Inch Nails album Trent Reznor purposely made “hard to listen to”
By 1992, Trent Reznor was not a happy bunny.
He seemed to have reasons to be cheerful. Spending years on new wave’s fringes, an exposure to the industrial hammer-scrape blasted by the Wax Trax! cohort and Canada’s Skinny Puppy pointed the way toward a tougher, synth-pummel and scabrous lyrical gloom burnishing his new Nine Inch Nails project.
Ditching the short-sleeve blazers for punk leathers and combat boots but hanging on to his gift for a fierce pop hook, 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine debut would explode onto the US alternative underground with a respectable Billboard presence, eventually certifying Gold in only a few short years.
Trouble was, the TVT label was expecting Pretty Hate Machine II. Head honcho Steve Gottlieb had stated that under no uncertain terms was TVT going to release a record that didn’t further Nine Inch Nails’ winning aggro-synthpop formula. Trapped in a contractual dead end and further narked by the top-down creative control and financial disputes, Reznor teamed up with producer Flood once again to cut some new material in secrecy that flashed an infinitely more abrasive and heavy, volatile sound than fans were expecting.
There had already been some clues. Anyone witnessing Nine Inch Nails’ Lollapalooza slot in 1991 would have been bludgeoned with new number ‘Wish’s metal fury, as well as the rest of the setlist beefed up with a harder guitar attack amid the snarling keyboards.
But away from TVT’s corporate eyes, Flood and the band kicked off their incognito sessions, including one studio set-up at the infamous 10050 Cielo Drive site of Sharon Tate’s murder, for 1992’s Broken EP’s furious seethe against industry greed and artistic stifle, a burning metal corrosion of hissing Mellotrons and warped electronics that leapt out of the speakers like a rabid animal.
“A lot of people may say, ‘Oh, I don’t like it as good as Pretty Hate Machine because it’s not as accessible or it’s not as pretty or it’s not as sad,’ or whatever the fuck they might say,” Reznor shrugged to Chaos Control at the time. “That was meant to be a flexing muscle, it was meant to be an abrasive, hard-to-listen-to thing, and lyrically, it changed viewpoints.”
He added, “Because where Pretty Hate Machine’s viewpoint was kind of like ‘Things might suck, but I still care about myself and I still want things to be cool trying to fix them,’ Broken was ‘Things suck, and I suck, and I don’t fucking care about anything, including myself.’ And that’s not as positive a statement to make or yell, and a lot of people, I don’t think, want to hear that statement, and that’s a specific statement for a specific mood for people.”
Above the Broken sessions, Interscope boss Jimmy Iovine arranged a legal exit to his ‘artists first’ roster, and the stage was set for Nine Inch Nails’ 1990s domination. Reznor would unleash The Downward Spiral’s critical and commercial peak two years later, but Broken stood as its essential sonic predecessor, vigorously shaking off expectations and still topping the charts with his singular, uncompromising creative ferocity.
