Ministry

In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up
Sire / Warner Bros, 1990

This column has been a bit emo lately, so it's time for the horns – \m/ \m/!!! – and a band with two drum-kits. Ministry began as a limp-wristed new wave project before singer and founder Al Jourgensen, a Cuban-Norwegian junkie known for ridiculous haircuts and leather jackets, revived his love for electric guitar in the mid-'80s and recruited drummer extraordinaire Bill Rieflin and guitarist Paul Barker from Seattle band The Blackouts.

It's rare a band's best release is one of their live recordings. In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up, with a picture of a crash test dummy in redneck clothes smashing into a windscreen on the cover, was recorded during a tour with extra drummer Martin Atkins in 1990. It features six tracks from Ministry's greatest studio albums, The Land Of Rape And Honey and The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste, which preceded their break into Top 40 territory with Psalm 69 a year or two later.

Most of the tracks are standard-length blasts of noise, but on the eleven-minute 'So What' the band play with spaced-out bass grooves and cut-up audio samples during the verses, before the dual-drummers explode into action and Jourgensen screams "I'm ready to fight!" over the chorus. On last track 'Stigmata' Rieflin and Atkins smack their kits furiously and out-of-time with each other so it sounds like a giant army helicopter taking off from the middle of the stage. It ends with Jourgensen belting out his hate-list: "Fuck the church, fuck the Jews, fuck the Buddhists, fuck the Hindus, fuck George Bush, fuck Gorbachev, fuck all these arseholes, fuck you, fuck me, fuck all of you, ahaha!"

After finding their way onto Video Hits in '92 with 'Jesus Built My Hotrod', a collaboration with Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers, Ministry's main players wandered off on side-projects and the band never really recovered. Jourgensen and Barker spent most of the decade forming bands with people like Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, Fugazi's Ian MacKaye, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and writer William S. Burroughs. None of them lived up to Ministry, but Revolting Cocks and 1000 Homo DJs are worth a listen.