What Happened to Ministry?

Cafe Society
1

Hijacked thread from the Kittie - Oracle thread…

Ministry is a strange band. They started out as a pretty darned good (for the time, anyway), synth-pop 80’s new wave band. Even released a couple of “hit” singles: “Effigy” and “Revenge.” I was maybe 14 at the time those tunes came out & I really dug them.

I dug 'em even more when they started doing the Electronic Body Music thing on Wax Trax records. And I thought Twitch was (when it came out) the defining “syn-dustrial” record of the day (at a time when we were being introduced to similar acts as Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb, Ministry did it tons better).

But it was the next three CDs: The Land of Rape and Honey, The Mind Is A Terrible Thing to Taste, and Psalm 69 that really defined their genre.

Each CD got progressively harder, and progressively cooler. By the time Filth Pig came out in 1995, I think everyone who was into Ministry was salivating at the prospect of yet ANOTHER genre-twist. But Filth Pig sucked. And The Dark Side of the Spoon sucked even more.

Last I heard of them, they were bloody awful as the “house band” in that circus-fair-thingy in A.I. where humans destroyed rogue replicants. Al (Ministry’s “singer” and chief “creative force”) was still wearing that trademark cowboy hat he first started wearing around the time Psalm 69 came out, eight years earlier.

The old CDs still rock. I was in a record store a few months ago, and Taste (which I hadn’t listened to in a couple of years) was playing in the background. It was like that scene in High Fidelity where John Cusack shills Beta Band CDs: everyone in the store was bobbing their heads.

It is clear, however, that they have somehow descended into the depths of suckiness and (dare I suggest it) irrelevance.

My questions for dicussion here:

  1. So what happened to Ministry? Is this just another case of rock obsolescence, or is something more sinister (like getting off smack) at work here?

  2. Can you think of any other bands that have crossed so many disparate genres, and if so, have any been as successful as Ministry in each of those genres?

Please ponder.

2

Ministry was robbed and recycled into a band called Rammstein…

or so they say :smiley:

I really love Ministry. For my money, I’ll listen to The Land of Rape And Honey on repeat for three days.

It gives me strength.

I also think it’s obsolescence. Remember how in high school we all thought NIN was the hardest, craziest music you could get (OK, maybe not you, but me and my Depeche Mode friends certainly thought that) and now you listen to Pretty Hate Machine and it’s…mild. It’s nothing.

Trent Reznor has made the Ministry descent…just slowly sucking more and more until we’re encountered with something like Perfect Drug. Which is fine…for alternative radio.

Anyway. I like old ministry, too. And that’s all I wanted to say.

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I like The Land of… and The Mind is but Psalm 69 was where they got to be too metal for my tastes. Haven’t bothered with them since.

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Is it possible for something to be TOO METAL? :smiley:

jar

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Just a me too post.

I loved Ministry up until Filth Pig. Honey, Taste and Psalm all came out when I was in high school, and my friends and I listened to them religiously.* I have no idea what happened to them either, but most of the bands of the same gebre also started to suck, Nitzer Ebb, Skinny Puppy etc. I remember going to see Ministry for the Flith Pig tour and being so disapointed by the music I didn’t even bother to buy the CD.

  • [sub]Looking back now, it’s no wonder all the boys were scared of me in HS
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gebre should be genre argh

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For my liking, yes. This would also include Rammstein.

::runs to hide in a bomb shelter::

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Too each his own.

But I think you’re dumb

:smiley:

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Watching the “In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up” concert video at a party my freshman year of college remains one of my strongest college memories. But lots of bands go out with a whimper. Lots of bands finish their careers by putting out a couple of mediorce albums after a string of good ones. Why? Record company contracts which require an X number of albums for one, though I’m not sure if Ministry was contractual obligated to produce Filth Pig and whatever the last album was called.

Hard to guess what the reason for Ministry’s fade out, though I would tend to put the lingering effects of heroin addiction high among the suspects. Ministry was also mostly a “one man band”, Al Jorgensen, with a revolving cast of players. The entire “industrial” scene pretty much disappeared around about 1995 and perhaps with the loss of the scene and its players, perhaps Al lost his “muse” so to speak.

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Last I heard the guys from Ministry were playing with none other than Jello Biafra himself. I haven’t heard any of their stuff but I’m sure it’s rather…interesting.

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fiddlesticks: I never saw the video (I have the CD), but I did go to a Ministry show at the Channel in Boston that was part of that tour.

The Channel was kind of a low-ceilinged warehouse type venue, with a corrugated steel roof supported by steel girders (it was a long time ago – if I got the materials wrong, sue me). Suffice to say there was very little insulating material between the audience and the sub-zero temperatures outside. So, as the heat and humidity of the sweaty crowd increased, the ceiling began to drip near-freezing raindrops on the crowd.

KMFDM opened the show, and I remember thinking how… gay …the band (just two guys on stage) seemed. The “singer” was all decked out like Pete Burns from Dead Or Alive, wearing a trenchcoat over a fishnet teddie and high heels. I am amazed they are still around (though calling themselves MDFMK now), as I was certain that day they would meet the fate of hundreds of other opening bands that faded into obscurity immediately after the headliners finished their set.

Anyway, they had erected a chain link fence in front of the stage, ostensibly to “discourage stage diving,” but probably more for effect than anything else. Almost immediately after Ministry’s set started (and Al began drinking the magnum of Jim Beam he brought out on stage with him), the crowd began to tear down the fence. This wouldn’t be so bad, but people were swinging long metal poles around – someone could easily have gotten hurt. So, the roadies and Channel management came out on stage in a panic to see if Al would ask the crowd to give back the fence. Al took a big swig of Beam and screamed into the microphone “Why? They’re not gonna fuckin’ kill themselves!” And the band played…

Chaos reigned for a few brief, beautiful moments, as parts of fence were twirled overhead, and people began climbing on others’ shoulders so they could hang from the girders and whirl like dervishes. And Ministry pounded away. And Al swigged his Jim Beam.

It was, without question, one of the best concerts I have ever seen.

Too bad they suck now.

Cisco: Are you thinking of Lard? As I recall, Jello was part of that band, one of numerous Ministry side projects (Revolting Cocks being the best known) that pretty much sucked – Lard especially. Jello also appears on the “In Case You Didn’t feel Like Showing Up (Live)” CD. As an honorary “father of the underground,” Jello cameos on a lot of things, none as good as even the worst DK’s cut. Talk about fading into irrelevance…

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I think the descent of Ministry into suckitude is based on Al’s partyin’ madman lifestyle (which is supposedly something of the past… maybe), Al’s divorce in the mid-90’s (married Al = good Ministry, divorced Al = bad Ministry), and disenchantment with Warner Bros. This is all conjecture, of course, but I would put more blame on the first two causes.

But lemme be the first to say that Filth Pig is a woefully underappreciated gem. They swerved away from the metal and more into the heavy, and I think it was pulled off really well. And it showed a lot more maturity, attitude-wise and musically, than Psalm.

Dark Side, though, is horrible. Nay, atrocious. Unlistenable. And, dare I say, poo.

Personally, I think Al could do some really good ambient music, but I doubt he’d let that happen…

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I WANT TO SAY I INSPIRED THIS THREAD. PURDZILLA YOU THIEF!! :wink: jk

Any way, Psalm 69 is still the heaviest frickin album I have ever heard, and I listen to some heavy shit. Filth Pig had about 3 good ones on it, but Dark Side was garbage.

My guess is that Al got too big of a head. He inspired most, if not all, of the electronic “metal” that you have heard in the past 8 years or so. I heard he is a perfectionist and ruined Filth Pig by over editing it. Land of Rape and Honey is awsome, so was Mind, but the crowning moment for ministry was Psalm 69. Just one fix and Jesus Built my Hotrod still get me fired up.

Al has done alot of side projects though. Anyone remember Revolting Cocks? That was a pretty tight little group. That had Jello singing and Al and Paul playing if Im not mistaken.
One thing I have thought for quite some time, and chime in if you agree with me: STATIC X = MINISTRY WANNABE? I mean, its one thing to be influenced by another group, but these guys use the same sounds and schtick that ministry did so much better 10 years ago. Im not saying that Static X is an awful group mind you, they have some good tunes, but they are a virtual carbon copy of everything that was Psalm 69.

just my 2 bits…

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Crap, Lard had Jello, not RevCo. I kinda liked Lard though.

“There coming to take me away ho ho hee hee ha ha to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time…”

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True, but for some reason I cant stand to listen to Static X. Yet Psalm 69 is a great album to me and easily the best of the genre(that I have heard and I’m far from a fan of industrial).
dead0man

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[shout-out] Credit where credit’s due, Phlip. You got me going on this tangent. You’re a true inspiration, a thought leader, my hero. [/shout-out]

From the responses so far, consensus is that Al just plain got too big-headed to make relevant music. Or maybe his drug addictions got the best of his muse. Everyone agrees Dark Side of the Spoon wallows in major suckitude, while a few meekly submit that Filth Pig isn’t entirely sucky, just mostly so. All seem to agree the future for Ministry looks bleak. Semp advocates another genre switch to ambient, but he doubts it will ever happen. I wouldn’t be so sure…

Nobody’s bothered to try and answer my second question: has any other band crossed so many disparate genres and had a modicum of success in each one? Think about it: Ministry started out as a synth-pop band, then (with the same name and personnel, no less) completely changed styles at least two times (some might say three times, the third unsuccessfully). Has any other mainstream artist done this even once? Or is the specter of “alienating fans” too great in today’s corporate artistic culture? I’m racking my brains – it seems like there should be at least one or two – but I’m coming up blank. Help me out here, friends.

Oh, and as far as Static X is concerened – total Ministry wannabes. Not in a bad way, mind you. At least Wayne Static is fun to look at. They are not the least bit ashamed of their influences, either: I have an MP3 of Static X’s cover of “Burning Inside” (from some movie soundtrack) that is virtually indistinguishable from the Ministry version. I never understood why a band would bother to cover a tune if it wasn’t going to put its own spin on it (wedding bands excepted, of course), unless it’s done as a hero worship tribute sort of thing.

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Yup.

On the contrary, I’d dare say it’s one of my favorite albums of 1996 (a good year for music in my mind, so that’s saying something).

**

In its current form, yes. They’re kind of like Kraftwerk in a way. Back when Krafwerk was putting out albums on a regular basis they were waaaay ahead of what others were doing. They took a break, everyone caught up with them, and now they do virtually nothing while they live in self-imposed isolation, upset that they can’t be as innovative as they once were. Now look at Ministry. Once they were alone in the kind of music they made, whereas now there are tons of knock-off bands. The Ministry response? Banjos. Didn’t work. Commence suckitude level 10.

[QUOTE]
Semp advocates another genre switch to ambient, but he doubts it will ever happen. I wouldn’t be so sure…

[QUOTE]

Well, they did finish several albums with ambient noise pieces, and things like Dream Song or Faith Collapsing on The Mind… probably have a good deal in my postulation that it could be a viable move for them. But I don’t know if Al and Paul could commit themselves to long drawn-out pieces that won’t get heads bopping back and forth. Maybe as a side project (which would be, what, Al’s 400th?) in between adrenaline inducing Ministry stuff, but I don’t think they could do it as the #1 project.

Well, let’s see… With Sympathy: synthpop. Twelve Inch Singles: industrial-tinged techno. Twitch: relatively pure industrial. The Land of Rape and Honey: aggro (their term). The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste: aggro. Psalm 69: speed metal/aggro. Filth Pig: Black Sabbath-y metal. Dark Side of the Spoon: aggro (I think, I haven’t listened too it enough to say for sure). And if you want to know what “aggro” means, it means “hey, that sounds like Ministry!” As I’ve typed it out here it doens’t make them look all that different, but that’s a failing on my part. And if you throw in the side projects you could cover the entire map of musical influences, save, of course, for Yanni.