Thursday March 28th 2024

TV II – Ministry

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Pure Punk Picks
TV II – Ministry

 

“Tell me something I don’t know. Show me something I can’t use. Push the button. Connect the goddamn dots.”

Ministry was one of those bands that I happened to stumble upon, that to tell you the truth, I have no idea how or why I first became interested in them. I know I did buy their great album “Psalm 69” that totally ripped the top of my head off making me change my way of viewing things musically. And making me change my unpleasantly, soiled underwear after listening to it.

Because, after I scrambled to gather and place my scattered brain matter back inside my head, I trotted off with a new musical reality, a new musical understanding.

The Sex Pistols and The Clash did this to me. Actually, The Ramones before them. And, I guess, The Velvet Underground before all those bands. And I know that Public Enemy did this to me as well.

And though, the scrambling for brains is always time consuming and tedious. I welcome any and every experience like this that I’ve ever had- laundry bills, notwithstanding.

There’s probably little connection between Ministry and Public Enemy- but to my mind, my ears- they were both had volatile aggressive, angry sounds and words that came leaping out at you like coiled rattlesnakes, that then decimated and destroyed any lies, falsehoods that festered about you, or any quaint niceties you indulged in, or that stood in their way.

I might have heard Ministry even before I heard the term “industrial”, I don’t know, but what I love most about this band is how ahead of the time they were with their sound. I listen to this song and realize that if it was released today, it probably would be viewed as a new power violence release.

This song starts with the sound of tape whirring around, the kind of tape used in cassette players and recording studios- going backwards- that recreate a sound that was most common in the sixties or seventies.

After an echoing, bellowing, elongated scream- this song has a distorted, metal guitar riff that stands by itself, and would not be out of place on any early, classic Black Sabbath album. That is, before it lifts off into the future, once again.

There are small intrusions of hits of sound and white noise splattering about. But when the machine generated rhythm comes crashing in, we’re off on a full-throttle, hardcore/thrash excursion that is hard driving and passionate and leaves no doubt on the intense experience we’re about to encounter.

“Live-in thief in my bedroom bathroom. Commodity sodomy, glass arch enemy. Promise everything, take it all away. Give it a rest. You’re lying through your teeth.”

This is a band from Chicago, so I’m sure they were influenced by the great, abrasive band from there- Big Black.

Come to think of it, Big Black were called “industrial.” But I’m not sure that term was even used back in the early eighties from where they first started.

Anyways, you can clearly hear the thrash metal in the rhythms, matched with the midi, synth generated drums. That was previously used, exclusively, in dance/ disco/ Europop songs.

And though, the leader of this band, Al Jourgensen, might have been a little ripped when he recorded this- this recording is top-notch, perfect in sound and execution. Not merely, in a professional sounding way but in an awesome, aggressive, passionate, heartfelt sort of way.

Every beat, every sound pulses with the heart and soul and blood of a feeling, intelligent, living being.

(Please click here to prove you’re not a robot!)

This is some amazingly, abrasive, aggressive, speed metal fueled, industrial hardcore music. That is uncompromising, artistically pure, influential, expressive, existential and just ecstatic inducing uncut stuff.

Please don’t put anything in your veins like Al did. That would be your biggest mistake in your life.

But do take this great band, this great recording freely into your system. Absorb it into your central nervous system and enjoy the musical bliss it inhabits.

Connect the goddamn dots!

 

TV II – Ministry
TV II

 

(Slimedog)

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