clocking at roughly one minute, "pinion" is the shortest nine inch nails song. 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).