Trent and company DEMOLISH six tracks from Broken (Gave Up, Last, Wish x2 and Happiness In Slavery x2). These tracks all have a few things in common: you will be hard-pressed to identify the original song if you don't have the tracklisting in front of you, and they tend to be repetitive. Some tracks just drone on at points, but they always pick up again. Don't even attempt to listen to this while going to sleep; there are MANY layers to these tracks, and there's weird stuff going on in the background that will make you jump.

Some songs, one of the Wish remixes for example, have samples in them that will COMPLETELY catch you off guard, and you might even chuckle about them later. NIN obviously had a lot of fun putting this together, but this definitely is the hardest-to-swallow NIN album to date. A lot of my friends who listen to NIN don't like this because it's just "too weird."

I love this album purely for it's creativity. I must reiterate, though, that if you LOVED Broken just because it was a good thrash album, and nothing more, then stay away from this; it will give you a bad taste for NIN. This is their most extremely divergent album, but if you just give it a try, it will grow on you. On a final note, this is the domestic release. There is NOTHING track-wise different between it and the import version. May I suggest buying the US version first? If you're not sure if you'll like it or not, this is the way to go. If you DO end up liking it, and are the completist, you can always get the import later.


It's exactly what industrial is all about...   January 10, 1999
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

I've heard people bitch and I've heard people praise "Fixed" the 1992 follow-up to NIN's EP "Broken". Here's the straight poo on what it's all about. "Fixed" is the closest to pure industrial music Trent has gotten to. It's not experimental, main-stream, or even understandable. It is an album about sound and emotion. "Broken", when compared to other NIN albums, sticks out like a sore thumb due to its abrasive guitar, drums, and a noticeable absence of industrialized components which NIN is associated with. I happen to love Broken, it might very well be my favorite NIN album, but I must say "Fixed" is a musical masterpiece, not a flop. In all sense, the titles of the two albums should have been flip-flopped, for "Broken" sounds much more like a "Fixed" version of the songs. Maybe that's what Trent had in mind when he named them. Always playing with our heads is he. However, this album is NOT for everyone. In order to appreciate this album you must also appreciate an abstract manipulated noise. This is the emotion Broken just couldn't get across. It is a fine blend of mayhem meets harmony. I recommend "Fixed" to anyone who enjoys being taken into the music, not just listening.


Noise   March 19, 2004
 13 out of 25 found this review helpful

This is by far my least favorite NIN CD. I didn't like it the first time I listened to it, and I haven't liked it since (and believe you me: I tried to like it).

It's simply noisy. Now I know, alot of NIN is loud, distorted, etc, but this seemed noise for noise's sake. Now, I LOVED Broken. It was in fact my first foray into non-pop music. I loved how loud and aggressive it sounded. Fixed managed to take all of that noise and simply filter out the the purpose imo. The vocals are buried under wall of noise, the measures are chopped up... and that's my real big peeve actually (measure chopping). I loved Wish; it was my favorite song on Broken. They took the guitar riff and arbitrarily chopped off the last beat in the measure... and looped it. It's grating. I thought at first my CD player had freaked out or perhaps the CD was scratched.

Now, just so no one thinks I just hate remixes... I LOVED Further Down the Spiral (The Botton, At The Hear of it All, Erasure[polite]... all great remixes). And they were quite different than their originals... especially The Bottom which was my favorite track. But, they'd been crafted into new songs. Every time I hear tracks on Fixed, I get an image of a guy that just got a new mixing program and wants to see just how much "damage" he can do. "Ooo... check it out; this program lets you just drop a beat out... AWESOME! It's like, I'm in 4/4 now and then... *BAM!* it's the same thing only in 3/4. What a mind trip! What else can this thing do?!"

:-/


Buy Broken And Fixed NOW   December 6, 2003
 9 out of 10 found this review helpful

I need to counter the mediocre and bad reviews of Fixed. This CD is absolutely worth getting. Broken is about as pure Trent Reznor as you can get and Fixed is a step beyond that. If you like Broken and Fixed, you like the real NIN.

Gave Up is fantastic, perfectly disjointed yet still driving and aggressive. Then there's Wish. It alone is worth the price of the CD. The original was great, this remix is life-altering. It's violent, shrill, jarring, it takes everything that makes NIN what it is and cranks it up to the highest level.

After Wish, the songs get more quirky and less "song-like". This isn't a bad thing, this is Trent Reznor. If you like things even more off-the-wall, the last few tracks might just be your favorites.

Regardless, I consider Fixed and Broken to be the most NIN of all the NIN CD's. If you really want to get inside Trent's head and see just what the world looks like to him, buy these, jack up the treble, jack up the volume, then listen 'til your ears bleed.


A far cry...   July 7, 2000
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Despite warnings about 4 years ago from a friend who told me not to buy it, I'm glad I blocked him out. This is quite a far cry from the normal NIN sound, but it's quite an amazing trip. It's extremely harsh and brutal. Coil's mix of "Gave Up" speeds the whole thing up and adds an extreme amount of anger, which is wonderful. Thirwell aka Foetus' remix of "Wish" is the longest track here, adding up to a whopping 9 minutes, and never loses it's intensity. The Paul Kendall remix of "Happiness in Slavery" is my personal favorite here. Not much remains from the original song, but it's a frenzy of wailing synth and screams with the everpresent beat still thumping away. The album takes a strange turn on "Throw This Away". It's INCREDIBLY subdued, well as far as this album goes anyways :), and then just erupts into a remixed ending of "Last" from Broken. "Fist F*ck" is where Thirwell gets another shot at deconstructing "Wish" into such an incredibly bizarre entity of it's own. "Screaming Slave" is one of those tracks you either love or extremely hate. It's that simple. It's a pure deconstruction of "Happiness in Slavery".

This is definitely not an album for the casual NIN listener. The whole album, if you can believe it, has a much rawer angrier feel than Broken. It's probably a good album for someone into harsh abrasive sounds or industrial music. If you were into such NIN fare as "Closer" or "Head Like A Hole", best odds are for you to stay away from this one and get "The Downward Spiral", a much tamer excursion. Ahh... just listening to it brings back such memories...