Morning Commute: Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey

Ministry's 1988 album sees Uncle Al and friends in mid-leap from crap fake English accent darkwave synthpoppers to full on industrial thrash merchants. Some of the cut-up sampling is horribly dated, and the overall effect is like being assaulted with a nail gun and a frying pan for 45 minutes, but it's good fun, if a bit one-note. There's a significant Skinny Puppy influence in hindsight, particularly on the drums and some of the vocal treatments, although the latter can't hide Jourgensen's continued Dick Van Dyke impersonation. Highlights: title track, "Stigmata" and "You Know What You Are".

Ministry would perfect the assault on 1989's The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste and 1991's Psalm 69, then move full-on into second division thrash to rapidly diminishing, if remarkably consistent, returns, with everything released from 2000 in particular thoroughly avoidable. Best entry point is probably 2001 compilation Greatest Fits, optionally augmented with early synthpop albums With Sympathy and Twitch, not least because Al would greatly prefer everyone forget the former forever.

Fix: The Ministry Movie

Uncle Al's apparently off recording a synthpop album (perhap's he'll cover "Same Old Madness", but Ministry's not entirely dead - trailer for the new documentary below.



Via Slicing Up Eyeballs

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Is that old Ministry will live forever. Below, two videos Uncle Al doesn't want you to see - "Revenge" off With Sympathy, and "Same Old Madness," a slightly earlier track that makes Depeche Mode's live "Price Of Love" sound like Einstürzende Neubauten covering Cannibal Corpse by comparison. I've still got a soft spot for Ministry's debut, although for younger Ministry metalhead fans it must be somewhat like discovering Metallica's first album was actually Haircut 100's Pelican West. Ministry would be brilliant twice, with Twitch and The Land Of Rape & Honey, good once, with 1992's Psalm 69, and irretrievably if energetically shit thereafter. You get the sense that everything from Psalm 69 onward was essentially Al Jourgensen screaming "No, I am a hard man, no really, look how completely fucking not new wave at all I am. I'm Charles Manson, I am, honestly. Look - microphone stand made out of human bones. I'm deranged, me. "

With Sympathy has somehow missed the two disc deluxe edition treatment, and autographed copies are obviously harder to come by than a magazine without fucking Bono in it, but the album is available on Amazon's mp3 store. Worth buying a copy, if only to picture the profound emotional conflict I'd guess Al goes through every time the royalty check comes through the post.