Ministry
 

What no thread one of the finest Industrial Metal bands ever? and of course there are the numerous side projects too:

Revolting cocks, Lard, 1000 Homo DJs, PTP, Acid Horse, Lead Into Gold, Pailhead.

Have some tracks and love:


They still rank as one of the best bands I have ever seen live and I was so frigging pleased to see them last year as they have ceased touring.

Wow, they are ranked very low on the list of bands I've seen live. Perhaps because it was more recently that I caught them, but it was fucking terrible. Now that I think about it, it could be a number of things to why the show sucked (venue, company, fuckin' sound guy, etc.) , but I stand in my ignorant ways and am pretty content about never seeing them live again.

One of the defining bands of my youth without a doubt. They're not nearly as good now as they were in their late 80s/early 90s heyday but Al still comes up with some good stuff from time to time.

Seriously? I saw them last year and I was right near the soundboard and they were phenomenal and everyone with me said the same. The venue was great though!

I agree that they are a shadow of their former selves but they still hold a dear place in my heart!

Like I said, it was most likely the venue. The sound alone gave me a headache and I actually LEFT EARLY. Trust me, I was pretty heartbroken about it, too.

Yeah, that show was pretty lame. I had really been looking forward to it, too.

Definitely. Can't believe there wasn't a thread about them!

I missed seeing them live in their hey day, but caught them on the Filth Pig tour, which was the beginning of the end for me. I checked out part of a more recent album and it wasn't bad, but I just didn't feel it was necessary for me to get it. Twelve Inch Singles, Land of Rape and Honey, The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste, In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up, and Psalm 69 are what it's all about for me.

They were my gateway into the world of industrial and industrial rock. A friend picked me up for school, shortly before I moved out of Chicago and my friends were just starting to drive. He had "Burning Inside" playing, I was like holy fuck what the shit is this, I LOVE IT! :bowdown: And that was that. At the time I was listening to mostly big-4 metal, some more alt rock like FNM and RHCP, etc.

Al Jourgenson is still alive. Wow.

I'm totally with you here. It's not that later Ministry is bad per se it's just that I feel he just started making inferior versions of Psalm 69 over and over again. I already own Psalm 69 and like it a lot so I've never felt a huge urge to get five more alternate-but-not-as-good re-imaginings of it.

It's funny, I had a somewhat similar introduction to them, also in a car. When I was 13 or 14 I was riding in my brother's car (with my mother of all people), looking through his tapes when the cover of Land of Rape and Honey jumped out at me. So I popped it in the tapedeck and promptly had my mind blown. I had never heard anything like that before and was immediately a fan. I remember trying to describe the style of music to a friend of mine a few days later and the best I could come up with was "a cross between Depeche Mode and Obituary".

It's the William S. Burroughs effect where if you do enough drugs they act as preservatives.

I just skip a step and lace everything with embalming fluid.

I thought I was the only one! Goes great with corn flakes.

Haha cool. I also remember hearing Thieves and the power drill sound and pounding drums really did it for me. So heavy and forceful, in a good way.

Aw hell yeah. "Thieves" was one of my favorite Ministry songs. "Breathe" is another classic from that album.

Some YouTubes for the uninitiated:





THAT's the tour I wish I'd seen them on. And I was living in the Chicago burbs too, had I only known. Though I might not have lived to see today.

If you don't mind my asking what suburb were you in? I lived in Chicago for a while myself.

I was in Naperville. From 86-92. You?

I lived on the far north side of Chicago in the Rogers Park neighborhood from 2001-2006. I went to Naperville quite a few times though. An ex-girlfriend of mine lived in Glen Ellyn and then in Bolingbrook so I spent a lot of time out the the general Naperville area.

I never spent any time on the north side, basically just the neighborhoods around Naperville and of course downtown Chicago. I bet Naperville was quite different already, 9 years after I left. I haven't been back since, but would like to visit one of these days.

Naperville as I knew was pretty nice and had a lot of stuff to do for a suburb. It had a nifty downtown which, hilariously, had a whole bunch of signs around proclaiming that you could be fined for cruising.

i'd be interested in hearing a bit more from this band. obviously they were before my time and i never really acclimated myself to that side of the musical spectrum. i have The Land of Rape and Honey but sadly i could never get into it.

Well that's one of their two best albums so if you don't like it, you probably don't like Ministry. I have to say I'm a little surprised to hear that from a Foetus fan like yourself though. If you want to give them another shot, check out The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste. It's their other best album but with a somewhat different sound from Land Of Rape And Honey.

Lol, fined for cruising? Maybe they just have too many teens crowding up the streets doing nothing but driving slow, pimping their rides. :p: It is definitely nice and interesting for a suburb. I did like the downtown a lot. I guess it's just that it's older than most suburbs, so it has more historic buildings etc. than the average suburb. From what I hear it's really a hot spot now (probably for the past 10+ years) and pretty pricey. Lots of condos and such whereas when I lived there (aside from the downtown) it was a very single-family home type of place.

Anyway. Ministry! As Janszoon said above, if one doesn't like The Land Of Rape And Honey I would try The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste next, however, even though they are a bit different I would think it may not appeal either. It might be best to go for either the more commercial industrial rock of Psalm 69, or backtrack to the more synth-pop style of Twelve Inch Singles (featuring the club hit "Everyday Is Halloween").

Filth Pig is a terminally under-rated album. The sick guitar town, the heavy-as-lead bass... I could have done without the Bob Dylan cover, but the whole album is solid.

The song "Brick Windows" is pretty damn good, and overall the album is definitely better than the following Dark Side of the Spoon (the only Ministry album I've ever sold), but it's still not all that great. However, after years of not having listened to it, maybe things have changed, I could have a new found appreciation for it, never know.

I've never found any post-Psalm 69 material really worth paying attention to. Sure they still have a good crunchy venomous sound on most of their later discs, and they can be enjoyable in smaller doses, but the creativity on them just seems to pale in comparison to the Twitch-Psalm era, and that's a lot of the band's appeal for me.

At their best, though, they were definitely one of the most brilliant bands in either industrial or metal. Sick, sick shit.

I just found this unreleased song/video from 1982 called 'Same Old Madness'. I think it's pretty awesome.

That is pretty good.

Al's microphone/sex toy is pretty hilarious though.

I hadn't noticed, haha. I only watched a bit of the video, had it playing in the background while doing other stuff. I actually quite like the vocal effects on this, making his voice sound pretty harsh at times compared to the released Ministry stuff of the era. I like the overall sound more than what's on With Sympathy, kind of odd that even though this was recorded before that album, the song has a darker, heavier sound that they later went back to (and obviously went heavier as time went on). I need to find a download of this song.

Yeah, I agree. This was almost closer to Twitch than to With Sympathy. I almost wish they had done more stuff like this. Good find.

When I was three, this **** blew-my-mind....