Been listening to the latest Ministry album Relapse. I sensed that Uncle Al wasn't quite done yet under this banner and certainly not done with the music industry, but considering that his nemesis George W. Bush no longer holds the reigns to the United States it makes to wonder what does Jourgensen have left to talk about? According to this new record, not much.
Musically it remains in the speedy, blistering vein he succumbed to back in 2004's House of the Mole' with speedy technical riffs that make rhythm guitarist Mike Scaccia yearn for the days he can slow down when playing for his other thrash metal band Rigor Mortis. The sound continued in Rio Grande Blood, and persevered through what was the final of the anti-Bush trilogy and the supposed Ministry grand finale album The Last Sucker. Now, after a handful of remix albums and cover albums, finally seeing the release of Buck Satan and the 666 Shooters own album Bikers Welcome, Ladies Drink Free, and opening Sonic Ranch to other bands for production, and surviving yet another near death experience, it seems as if someone has coerced Al Jourgensen to returning to his harsh mistress that is Ministry.
As Al told metal magazine Metal Hammer back in an August 2011 interview, "I've been listening to it the last couple of weeks and I wasn't really in the mood, I was just taking it as a joke." Yet, his bandmates pursued the album vigorously, giving us quite possibly the fastest and heaviest Ministry album yet, but lost in all of the chaos is Al's excitement. The messages in the songs lyrics are crystal clear and as the music is tighter, crisper, there is no element of danger. Ministry's albums were never afraid to step into the barrier of noise pollution in an effort to find the beauty in the madness. Relapse goes nowhere near the boundaries of raging lunacy, stopping at only hyper reality.
Having been a lifelong Ministry fan, Relapse picks up precisely where The Last Sucker left off. For newly recent Ministry fans that's good. They need Al Jourgensen's genius in their lives to save them from the rest of the wretched, un-listanable crap that pollutes the music scene these days, but for someone like me who has experienced all of the transformations and reincarnations, there's an emptiness in Relapse that can be filled only by a trip through the past, when the music was precisely dirty, which made it beautiful.
There's nothing wrong with the technical aspects of Relapse, and the cover of S.O.D.'s United Forces is a hoot, and I will listen to this album repeatedly because it is a good album, but there's another side of Ministry that has been missing for almost a decade. One more stab at redoing the undone wouldn't hurt (Al was industrializing metal and producing dub step before they were cool, hell before there were labels for such genres), but for now enjoy Relapse. It will kick your balls through your skull and out your ears. You may just start a fashion trend you lucky fuck.
No comments:
Post a Comment