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.

Who's the Sucker Now?

Yesterday I had the pleasure (so to speak) of getting a promo copy of Cover Up, Ministry's real swan song record (The Last Sucker not withstanding, apparently). Enclosed was a lengthy, rambling press release stating the record's raison d'etre through the faux-cool language PR people always seem to use when promoing a record: dancing around the edge of hyperbole, chock full of disconnected adjectives, etc. Seems that Dr. Alien Jourgensen decided that going out on a Bush-hating no fun bang wasn't good for his image, so he and Burton C. Bell and various members of the Revolting Cocks and Ministry and anyone else who was around decided they'd record all of the songs that motivated them to kick ass when they were kids. Since "when they were kids" means the late 60s and early 70s, the selections are from the same time period, and include some previous releases ("Supernaut" was on the first Black Sabbath tribute CD, and "Roadhouse Blues" came from The Last Sucker, because releasing the same song on two different albums less than a year apart is a great idea).

As you can probably tell from the hints in the previous paragraph, I'm not a big fan of this record, and my ire goes beyond Jourgensen stealing the name I used for a mix CD of covers I made about seven years ago (although he took cover up in the conspiracy context, using a pre-assassination picture of JFK, and I took it in a porn context, Photoshopping black boxes on a Playboy playmate). If you've been following along, you've probably guessed the reason: Ministry is an industrial band, and the songs he chose are about as straight up rock as you can get. Now, I have no problem with some genre-bending cover action; I think it takes real talent to remake a song in a totally different image and still have the result make sense to those who know the original (see Queensryche - Take Cover for a good example). But Ministry's covers don't innovate, they destroy.

Take "Black Betty," for example. The original song rocks because the solo guitar riff (especially the breaks in the solo guitar riff) grabs your attention. It's the definition of a hook. Ministry's cover of "Black Betty," however, tosses in an electronic double bass line in the background, cutting the power of the hook in half. The rest of the songs - the ones I could stomach listening to, anyway - have similar issues, all coming back to the same basic problem: these covers lack the grit that makes the originals so good. These aren't songs you wash up and take home to Mom; they're balls-out rockers that smoke, drink, and curse their way through three minutes and thirty seconds, and polishing them up - even as you try and make them kick ass in a very modern way - just makes 'em lame. And in the end, that's Cover Up in a word: lame.

Ministry Announces Final Album and Tour

I got an email from a PR agent today announcing the release of Ministry's final album, slated to hit the streets on September 18. Entitled The Last Sucker, it's 11 songs about how much Al Jourgensen dislikes our country's leadership, which seems as good a topic as any. It even claims to be "the third in an unrelenting and uber-critical CD trilogy aimed at exposing the plethora of foils, failures and fabrications perpetrated by the George W. Bush Administration," so I guess Al's got a lot of hate backed up. The tour that follows will usher in the end of Ministry, so if you're into that sort of thing get your wallets ready - Jourgensen prefers to "be behind the console than behind the mic" these days, which I guess translates into a Beatles-eque retirement from the stage.

I wouldn't call myself a huge Ministry fan; I have a tape copy of The Land of Rape and Honey, but that's about as far as I got. I am curious though to see what Ministry does with a cover of "Roadhouse Blues," which might be the most gutsy evil song on The Doors' debut disc and the addition of Burton C. Bell on backing vocals for three tracks should be interesting. This album might be a good excuse to explore another new-to-me classic band.