So the final curtain may well have fallen for Ministry after 26 years of releases. Their humble origins from the synth pop of 1983 ‘Work For Love’ album morphed into the industrial juggernaut, which saw two of the undisputed best albums of the genre ‘Land Of Rape And Honey’ 1998 and ‘The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste 1989. They even got a taste of mainstream accessibility with dance floor smashes like ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’ from critically acclaimed ‘Psalm 69’ 1992 before going down a somewhat strange and headfucked mid period and flirting with some interesting covers. The latter era Ministry has of course been somewhat obsessive with the George W period of history and the feckless leader of the world has provided plenty of material to fuel the last few studio albums incurring no small amount of contempt from Al Jourgensen along the way. Of course we could cross reference all the other bands that members have been involved in but would be here all day and it is only Ministry that decided to call it a day with the fall of Bush from office.
Not to say that this means the end of the band as far as releases are concerned. There is probably a good chance that unreleased material will be unearthed; there must be a stack of it after all these years. How about an album of remixes? Well seeing as Sin Quirin has gone and put together the Revamp project with DJ Hardware doing both remixes of the classics and playing live it’s all systems go on that front. How about another live album celebrating the C U Later tour? Well here it is.
Although this is actually the third live album from Ministry it does not cross over with material from either ‘In Case’ or Sphinctour and only concentrates on the latter period Ministry releases. It was a bit disappointing as far as we were concerned on attending said tour, as for a last time we wanted to hear the classics and only got a few towards the end. However this is a worthy release for completists and general Ministry fans to own on disc. The 13 tracker hosts numbers performed in Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Los Angeles & Chicago but does feel that it could apart from a sudden fade out during ‘The Last Sucker’ be from just the one show.
Crashing in with ‘Let’s Go’ (what else) the mix is powerful and packs a punch and at least we are not watching the band playing irritatingly behind a wire fence like they were on the tour. I have to admit stuff from ‘The Last Sucker’ is only just beginning to grow and I really have not paid enough attention to it (another album on the list that must be bought). However when we swing into the W’s with ‘No W’ (yeah I know what I said there) things really pick up for me. Followed by ‘Waiting,’ ‘Worthless’ and ‘Wrong,’ this is the most hyperkinetic adrenaline fuelled segment of the CD as it was the shows and just listening to it now I can practically feel bruises from the resulting pit blossoming into fruit all over again.
Finishing off we get four from ‘Rio Grande Blood’ again not a bad album but having the somewhat self indulgent ‘Khyber Pass’ as the final track here leads to a bit of an anti climax and makes you think it is perhaps for the best they didn’t carry on…..up the Khyber (sorry could not resist that). Still the albums title track is a fucking belter so it’s not that bad. I have to admit that I am a bit biased towards ‘Sphinctour’ having classic numbers such as ‘NWO’ and ‘Thieves’ on it along with personal favourites ‘Scarecrow’ and ‘The Fall’ but if you are like me you will want this album and probably the time to sit down and play all three live albums back to back.
So it’s goodbye Ministry it’s been a blast. Now when you reforming?
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