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Ministry biography
"I don't have any answers," insists Ministry frontman
Al Jourgensen. "I just want to kick you in the ass and get
you off your seat so we can come up with the solutions
together. Forget Ministry, forget all your little idols,
rock stars you have on the wall. Listen to us, process it
and spit it out. Think for your fucking self."
Jourgensen despises hype -- but the relentless power and
fire-and-brimstone inventiveness of Ministry's sound attracts
it like a swarm of mosquitos. "The best rock & roll band in
the world...the focal point of the true, new antisocialism,"
declared L.A. Weekly about 1990's video/live disc, In Case
You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up. "A techno-punk
masterpiece," the Chicago Tribune raved about 1989's The Mind
Is A Terrible Thing To Taste. And Creem has already declared
that the new Psalm 69: The Way To Succeed And The Way To Suck
Eggs, "invents a new kind of heavy, as Wagnerian guitars
swoop and fire like Kilgore's helicopters in Apocalypse
Now...what teenagers dance to while the earth is being
destroyed...ladies' night at a slaughterhouse."
"We just had it in us," Jourgensen says simply. "As you go
through life, you see more and more inequities and get more
pissed off about it. There's not a whole lot of time to do
something about it -- there's a sense of urgency now."
The electro-terrorist assault team that is Ministry began in
1981, when Jourgensen met up with partner in crime Paul
Barker, producing a band named the Blackouts. Their
collaboration spawned an indie single, "Cold Life," but
almost didn't survive a 1983 synth-disco release, With
Sympathy, that Jourgensen now refers to as "an abortion." The
experience filled him with a permanent loathing for the part
of the music business that deals with "crossover potential
and units and demographics and marketing" and a determination
to make music independently of label influence. "It would
have been easier to just start a new band," he says, "but I'm
glad we stuck to our guns, just to show people it could be
done."
Ministry's reputation for combining industrial music's cold-
hearted precision with a firestorm of aggressive impulses and
passionate opinions grew with their subsequent releases for
new label Sire, Twitch (1986) and The Land Of Rape And Honey
(1988). But it was The Mind Is..., a sonic witches brew of
incendiary metal riffs and complex layers of samples, that
brought Ministry to the masses -- an accomplishment that,
typically, Jourgensen insists he never wanted. "I don't see
this music being accepted on a national level," he says. "if
it does happen, it'll be disappointing -- it means it's not
threatening enough people."
Either way, there's a wide array of bands to continue
Ministry's anti-commerical tradition. Jourgensen and Barker
are part of a loosely-knit mafia of artists who make their
home base in the studio, Chicago Trax, including the
Revolting Cocks, 1000 Homo DJs, Lard (with legendary Dead
Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra), Pailhead, Acid Horse and the
countrified Buck Satan and the 666 Shooters. Together,
they've unleashed a whole new approach, a different way of
thinking about music.
Don't call it industrial. "I use industrial noises, but so
what?" says Jourgensen. "I use whatever it takes to get the
type of atmosphere I want on a song. I use guitars, that
doesn't make me Led Zeppelin." In general, the pigeonholing
inherent in being part of a specific genre doesn't sit well
with him. "We don't want to be part of an organized scene,"
he insists. "That's as bad as being part of the Boy Scouts."
Theirs is a more spontaneous approach: for the first single,
"Jesus Built My Hotrod," Butthole Surfers vocalist Gibby
Haynes "came down to say hello," recalls Jourgensen. "We got
him drunk and handed him a microphone."
Overall, however, the approach to Psalm 69 took the opposite
extreme. "I'm obsessive and meticulous," admits Jourgensen.
"There's a certain sound we're after, and we get it by going
over everything with a fine-tooth comb."
"There's a lot of faces of Ministry here, but also continuity
and cohesiveness. We didn't want to make a one-dimensional
record," he continues. "We did have a lot of interesting
people playing with us, and those people are encouraged to
use Ministry as a stepping board to other things. Bill
Rieflin (drummer) just toured China with an orchestra, and
that's wonderful. You take what you've learned, been exposed
to, and throw it in the melting pot that's called Ministry."
The result ranges from "Hero"'s slyly satiric, unabashedly
metal-headed bombast, to "Scarecrow"'s anguished grunge, to
"N.W.O."'s media-inspired, psycho-sonic take on the meanings
of "New World Order," to the title track's voodoo/soundtrack
carnival of religious references.
You want specifics? Listen for yourself. "I like to keep it
open, so people can have their own interpretation,"
Jourgensen insists. "People don't want to use their brains,
they want to be spoonfed." Ministry's aim is simple. "We're
powerless to make a physical, concrete change," Jourgensen
admits. "We want to make people question authority, pull up
their own bootstraps and do it themselves. We're just
serving as a catalyst."
Al Jourgensen -- guitars, vocals
Paul Barker -- bass
William Rieflin -- drums
Mike Scaccia -- guitar
Transmitted: 93-09-17 23:14:52 EDT
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