By Rich Hobson
It’s the Fourth of July, so what better way is there to celebrate the greatest nation on earth than by heading out to see their favourite sons sing anthems of equality, prosperity and freedom? Oops, wrong reality. It might be 4 July, but in England all that means is that its scorching hot as industrial legends Ministry roll into town. Outspoken and brash, the band have been raising hell for nearly 40 years, producing some of the finest anti-establishment tunes (and albums) in the business. Which makes it a bit mad that they’ve somehow managed to drop a UK tour right as industrial behemoths Rammstein play their only UK show this year and not end up on the bill (and if you don’t think Rammstein owe a debt to Ministry, just line-up ‘Du Hast’ and ‘N.W.O.’ back-to-back), but when it results in a headline performance from a band who a decade ago had rode into the sunset, well you just smile, take your apples and say yeehaw.
First up tonight are deadfilmstar, industrial stylings from the Midlands hub of industry, Coventry. Sat somewhere between The Stooges, Marilyn Manson and tonight’s headliners, deadfilmstar are a band from an age of metal past, feeling like they’d be right at home with the likes of KMFDM and Combichrist. Coupled with a writhing frontman (wearing black eye contacts for extra Mortiis levels of theatricality) and songs that could soundtrack a dystopian techno-apocalypse, deadfilmstar set the scene perfectly for the evening as they inject a little old school sleaze into proceedings, oil practically dripping from the blaring sounds coming from the stage. More than just another gig for deadfilmstar, frontman Gary admits that supporting Ministry is something the band have always had as a dream, so seeing them fulfil said dream some twenty years into their respective careers (deadfilmstar having existed in some form or another since ’99) offers a warm, human feeling atop the usually indifferent atmos of most industrial shows.
If deadfilmstar and Ministry are representative of industrial metal’s past, then 3TEETH are its howling revival. Looking like they stumbled off the set of a Blade Runner/Mad Max crossover, 3TEETH uphold industrial’s traditions of heavy leather gear and goth-tinged sonics, delivering with such aplomb that you feel like some Terminator-like shenanigans have transported you back to the turn of the decade circa ’89. The cybernetic sonics of ‘Divine Weapon’ serve as an appropriately apocalyptic kick-off to the ceremony, and the next 45 minutes fly by in a howl of rhythmic riffing, electronically-imbued howls (think Aphex Twin fronted by Mike Patton) and some hard-as-nails drumbeats. In a room full of dyed-in-the-wool industrial fans, 3TEETH’s set feels somewhat like preaching to the converted, but when the hymns are this infectious and in touch with why we love this music in the first place, we can’t help but sing along from the sheet like a canary.
Cast your mind back a decade and it looked like Ministry were done. Competing a trilogy of furious, venomous records aimed at the criminal ineptitude and outright despicableness of the Bush administration, they decided to close things out on 2007’s ‘The Last Sucker’, one last firing of nuclear hatred to a world they hoped wouldn’t need it any more. It didn’t last. The band barely made it five years before they were back in the saddle, as vitriolic and powerful as ever, taking a slightly different approach to ensure they never fell into a holding pattern of releasing the same record again and again. So while ‘AmeriKKKant’ most definitely follows in the footsteps of its Bush-bashing predecessor, the sound of Ministry has evolved to match the new world. This isn’t a band at war with the world, firing off shots until the elephant topples and crushes itself; ‘AmeriKKKant’ is a record that fully acknowledges those ideological wars have been lost, and all that remains is a dystopia that needs documenting.
Set against a screen which broadcasts all the imagery you’d expect of a Ministry show by this point (war, bombs, Trump, William S. Burroughs – the usual), the band dive right into the misery with the sludgey, trudging ‘Twilight Zone’. Whilst it was never in doubt that Ministry were on the road to support the new record, it comes as a bit of a surprise to realise that they are playing the whole ‘Amerikkkant’ record on this tour. But then, come November maybe the material won’t be relevant any more – we can dream, right?
While the music is decidedly weightier and more trudging than the thrashier efforts of the mid-00s, it doesn’t stop Al Jourgensen prowling the stage like a beast possessed, throwing poses and snarling with the accumulated weight of almost 40 years’ bile set to erupt. When the pace does pick up (‘We’re Tired Of It’) the room seems to overflow with bodies slamming into the barriers and just about every surface they can clatter into, Ministry showing they haven’t lost pace so much as found other gears to explore. ‘Antifa’ is marked by the arrival of two gas-mask wearing flag-waving anarchists, a nice touch to the song which first signalled the arrival of new Ministry material and pins the band’s colours firmly to the mast.
Ending like an unholy perversion of the Fourth of July celebration (or perhaps just a dirty mirror aimed at the state of modern America), Ministry close out the first part of their show with roaring guitars as ‘Amerikkkant’’s title track blares out. When Jourgensen returns to the stage and promises classics the mind floods with possibilities, but clearly he means the real classics, digging right the way to 1988’s ‘The Land of Rape and Honey’. With its incessant drum-beat and honking riff, ‘The Missing’ feels like the template all subsequent industrial bands took to heart, setting a thundering return to the stage that almost feels like watching a completely different band. Which – in many ways – Ministry are, and always have been, never holding down static line-ups for too long. Somehow even with the revolving door policy on personnel Jourgensen has always surrounded himself with similar titanic talents. The current Ministry line-up enjoys the supreme abilities of John Bechdel (Fear Factory, Killing Joke, Prong – among others), long-time collaborator Sin Quirin (Revolting Cocks, KMFDM) and original Tool bassist Paul D’Amour, each member of the band getting a call-out towards the end of the show as a highlight to their mastery of stage and sound.
A trilogy of ‘Land of Rape and Honey’ tracks kicks off the encore, but its not long before the band are diving headlong into a trilogy pulled from the band’s most renowned record, ‘Psalm 69’ (to give it its abridged title). ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’ is the thrashtastic masterpiece it has always been, but when the band burn out particularly enormous renditions of ‘N.W.O.’ and ‘Just One Fix’ it feels like the atmosphere in the room has reached boiling point. A spasming ‘Thieves’ closes out the Ministry portion of the set and it serves as a highlight to the prolific nature of Ministry’s discography that even in a show that is split between a new record and classics, the band have so, so many excellent tunes which could have happily reared their head during the set. The band opt to close their set out much in the same way they have in the past – with a rip-roaring cover of another song, though this time Al doesn’t stray too far from his backyard as he leads the band in a massive dance-happy roarthrough of Revolting Cocks ‘No Devotion’. With it having been quite some time since that band last properly reared their heads (a one-off anniversary show notwithstanding), it feels like a massive payoff for Jourgensen super-fans when the trippy acid-house industrial track takes hold.
Approaching the big 4-0 as a band, Ministry have made sure they’ll never consign themselves to being just a nostalgia act, their set a reflection of the current mindset the band holds. And while it would be utterly fantastic to see them pull out a discography-spanning set sometime in the future (one which might last six hours or so – no breaks – if we’re talking the entire Jourgensen discography), the fact remains Ministry are still a vital band, able to thrill fans just as easily with newer, ‘risky’ material as they do with the tried-and-true classics of old. Ministry have seen off their fair share of abhorrent administrations over the years, each travesty just more oil to the creative flame that still burns ever brighter.
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