Well fuck my old boots and call me Jessie. It is with great surprise that I have just realized I have not yet reviewed a Ministry album this year. Forget the fact that they split up a couple of years ago Uncle Al has hardly gone quiet with all his hard Cock action and remix albums here and cover albums there. In fact I just took a look and see there is a new ‘MiXXXes of The Molé’ album which has not got to me yet but may well do if I keep my fingers crossed. This particular Co-Conspirators project follows 2008 release ‘Cover Up’ which in case you were wondering, yes was essentially an album of covers. I believe this was meant to be called ‘Every Day Is Halloween’ Greatest Tricks on Cleopatra and released with different running order and plainer artwork. Instead it hits us with very cheesy James Bond artwork, I always would have thought Al could have made a good baddie myself but I can’t see this happening on any screen soon.
The album can be neatly divided into two factions, one the cover songs and two the cover of Ministry songs, with me? As far as the latter are concerned some of their finest are beefed up and given steroid treatment to make them even more muscular. N.W.O. ‘Stigmata’ and ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’ are amongst them and for some reason ‘Khyber Pass’ which seems to be one of the latter day numbers that gets trotted out here there and everywhere.
There are lots of classics from yesteryear to be found here as well. It should come as no surprise that Black Sabbath get a bit of hero worship, after all who can forget that cracking version of Supernaut by 1000 Homo DJ’s. This time you get not one but two for your $ with both ‘Iron Man’ morphed into metal and mangled into industrial waste and ‘Paranoid’ with swaggering guitar lines and building flattening monster grooves. The wah wah peddle gets pumped to the metal for hyperdelic ‘Purple Haze’ and beards are stroked as we rock along to ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ and an intense ‘Paint It Black There were a couple of songs I do not know the originals of, one was obvious being credited to Young and Young and Thunderstruck sounds great even if it is a song culled from one of the most overrated bands on the planet (yeah so bite me). The other was a perfect one by subject matter even if Amy Winehouse is an unlikely person to get the Buck Satan treatment. ‘Rehab’ is spewed out with manic intensity and there is even some crazy harmonica in there, Ministry turn whatever it was before into a bastard punk number and it sounds great.
As far as unreleased material is concerned there is plenty here to keep the long suffering Ministry and related family collector happy and shelling out those greenbacks. The other thing I must say is that the sound on this is brilliant, the production is as pumped up as it gets and this will have any neighbours with slightly more refined tastes thinking ‘what the blue rinse fuck’ as Ministry put the boot in on songs they grew up on. Great stuff, in fact I’m going to play it again
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