In the wake of my somewhat lukewarm impression of Ministry at BB King's earlier this week (see below), I thought I'd exhume an old thread from the ILX music boards that spells out what made Ministry initially so appealing to me. In other words...In Praise of...The Land of Rape and Honey by Ministry:
Prior to the cowboy hats and the chain link fence. Prior to "Buck Satan" and "Hypo Luxa" etc. After the so-called "abortion" that was With Sympathy (which, I should note, still think is brilliant) and the sleek-but-edgy Twitch. I'd always liked Ministry but had never given them a great deal of thought or consideration. They were a cool little synth-pop outfit from Chicago. End of story.
The chronology of how Ministry went from a dance-pop band into a feral "industrial metal" band has always sort've eluded me. I know Jourgensen had done some more aggressive music on Wax Trax prior to signing with Arista (who, it's been said, completely commandeered the ensuing With Sympathy towards the innocuously slick). But when I first layed ears (and eyes) on "Stigmata" in the chilly winter of 1988 (via its video on "120 Minutes" on MTV) it was like a bucket of ice cold, heavy water in the face. "Jesus, this is awful!" said my housemate Ben (a devout Style Council/Elvis Costello fanboy) upon its airing. "ARE YOU HIGH? THIS IS BRILLIANT!," I countered. The pummeling, mechanized rhythm, the menacing repetitious guitar hook, the screaming, the grinding, the relentlessness, the vitriol. Good god, it was the most refreshing thing I'd heard in ages (my beloved Killing Joke having recently gone all wanky prog at the time with the ham-fisted Outside the Gate album). It wouldn't be until first hearing Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction later that spring that I would get as excited about a record.
I tracked down The Land of Rape and Honey the next day (relishing the cover image....is that someone's face being dragged acoss gravel? PERFECT!) Right out of the box, the first three tracks ("Stigmata", "The Missing", "Deity") grabbed your larynx with one hand and pummeled your face with a steel meat tenderizer in the other. "Work for Love" this was not.
I could blather on about the tracks (I especially love the non aggro tune, "Hizbollah"). After this album, the flood gates seemed to open and Jourgensen became hugely prolific (releasing, via Wax Trax, albums by his other projects like the Revolting Cocks, PTP, Pailhead with Ian MacKaye, Lard with Jello Biafra, Acid Horse with Cabaret Voltaire, 1000 Homo DJ's originally with Trent Reznor, etc.), but Ministry themselve gradually became more parody-metal as they went on. I still loved them, but they got a bit monochromatic after a while. What I loved about The Land of Rape and Honey was that it seemed like such a switching of gears, and despite the brilliance of some of their subsequent singles, I've been waiting for another such gear-switching ever since. And I'm still waiting.
Recent Comments