Ministry at The Fillmore NY / Irving Plaza

I didn't like Ministry's last album. I didn't dislike it either, and I still have the copy I got for the review I wrote, but The Last Sucker is no Psalm 69, or Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste, or Land of Rape and Honey (Al sure does cook up some great album titles, doesn't he?). For this reason alone I was a little disappointed when I saw the set list from Ministry's final tour: a disappointment written by the preponderance of Bush Trilogy song selections and then sealed by the news that openers Meshuggah would be playing a paltry 35 minutes because of an impingement in the drummer's shoulder.

That's the great thing about low expectations, though: they're so very easy to surpass. I'm pretty sure Meshuggah played 45 minutes, for example, treating us all to the unexpected delight of watching musicians head bang in synchronization to different time signatures: the singer in a half-time four, the guitarists in whatever weird compound time signature they were playing in. It's very impressive to see, but I figured out the band's secret: I happened to spend their set a few feet back from the venue's computer-equipped soundboard, and noticed that their engineer had inserted a digital plug in Dark Essence into the mix. In absence of further evidence, I will assume that Meshuggah uses Dark Essence to insert the proper amount of distilled digital evil into their music. Highlight of the set: finishing the night with a face-melting version of "Future Breed Machine" that inspired one drunk patron - a gentleman with a shaved head and a long camouflaged skirt (Army/Navy surplus, no doubt) who'd been boosting himself up onto the barrier separating the sound and video engineers from us mere mortals all during the set and screaming, "Fuck the mainstream!" - to start an impromptu pit with two young women who were otherwise happily engaged in not moshing. He missed, one of them fell, and the other kicked him in the ribs until someone else dragged him off. It was a good scene.

But Ministry...man. I mentioned about a year ago that KMFDM / Pig in 2003 was one of the loudest shows I've ever been to. After seeing Ministry - incidentally the first industrial / industrial metal show I've seen since those far-off Boston days - I have a theory: when it comes to ear-splitting intensity, keyboards > guitars. Seeing Ministry live, with all volume knobs set to eleven, sound clips and weird synth sounds and pure noise pouring out of the keyboards, and buzzsaw guitar riffs cutting holes in the sonic atmosphere made even the new material sound very kick ass, and when the band pulled out the classic material for the encore, the show made the transition into Experience, melding hipsters, metalheads, and gearheads into one seething mass, all screaming "So what!" at the tops of their lungs, all moving at the behest of the guy up front with the black dreadlocks, Ozzy Osbourne sunglasses, and top hat.

After my friends and I skipped out before the second encore (replete with covers) ruined the evening, we passed other concert goers on the street speculating about the seriousness of the announcement of Ministry's purported demise. After that night, I don't think there's any question: if the goal is go out on a high note, this concert seals the deal. Ministry may be dead, but they sure as hell went out with a bang.

Mocking Boring Thrash

In addition to writing (independently now - woo!) concert reviews, I've picked up some work writing album descriptions. They're a bit like reviews, except I can't write anything negative (or anything too negative) because they're written for a retailer, which is in the business of selling CDs, not informing the public about their musical value. It's an interesting creative challenge, because it can mean finding the good in things that are, well, mediocre. Fortunately, thanks to MySpace, I can filter out the real trash before it comes to me, so to this point, if I'm writing to recommend something it's because I actually like it - which is why I bother linking to the reviews from my clips page.

Of course, there are always the ones I was happy to let get away, or the pieces I wrote that omitted my sharper criticisms for the sake of the client's request - but there's no rule that says I can't talk about those albums here. In other words: new feature, where I bash crappy metal albums, or cover the other side of my reviews. Let's begin.

Flash back to a couple of weeks ago. I'm perusing the weekly list my editor sends me with the week's additions. All of these albums either are or were on the Billboard 200 in the past year, and because I'm a Clear Channel-hating luddite who has way too much nostalgia for rock radio from the mid-1990s, I've generally never heard of three-quarters of the artists on the list because they're (presumably) on the airways and I'm not listening. In any case, unless I get lucky and something like ObZen or Ghosts I-IV gets on the list, I'm going to need to do some research through Google, Wikipedia, and MySpace.

This particular week's pull is pretty grim. There's Down's third album, which I really want to like because I like both Pantera-era Phil Anselmo (despite his being a huge douchebag) and Corrosion of Conformity such as they were when "Albatross" was a single, but I can't because it's legitimately terrible. There's Atreyu's latest release, but I liked them better when they were called Van Halen. And then there's a group called Black Tide.

Wikipedia tells me that Black Tide has an average age of very young (well under 20) and that they have a throwback late 80s thrash sound. Equally much seems to be made of their youth and their sound, which should set off alarm bells: I liked Silverchair when I was 14, but not too long afterwards I released how terrible that first album was and how part of the hype was that it was a rock album recorded by sixteen-year-olds. Anyway, I'm intrigued, so I find their MySpace page and take a listen. Very quickly, I am appalled. Even worse, I grow bored.

There's no doubt that Black Tide is a very talented group of musicians, with a pair of shredders who can play much better than I ever could. They even have a cool name for their lead single (if that's how you can describe a MySpace track): "Warriors of Time." Here's the problem though: take every NWOBHM and thrash cliche you can think of - twin guitar harmonies, fast paced palm mute riffs with thin, crunchy distortion, backing vocals that can easily be chanted by a large crowd - slap a nice production veneer on it, and you've got Black Tide. Their music is a faithful, boring reproduction of metal from twenty years ago, without any new touches or twists (besides the better recording quality) that would help them stand out from a crowd. I hate boring music. I will not review boring music. I will make fun of it instead. So, Black Tide: if you can cook up something new and interesting for your next album - even in the thrash vein - I will gladly give it a listen. Until then, you're getting far more attention than you deserve.