Ministry has had some obstacles to overcome in the production of their new album, Dark Side of the Spoon. The founders, Al Jourgensen and Paul Baker, battled heroin addiction, and won. They are back to powerfully crank out the vintage industrial metal sound that has made them famous since the 80’s. The band finished the album shortly after the new year began, but they were unhappy with the results and continued to bang heads until they achieved a quality release. After kicking the drugs, putting more twisted Ministry humor into the mix is some kind of medicine. The title, Dark Side of the Spoon, is a crack at heroin, and a handful of the songs prove that the band is having fun again in making brutal music.
Ministry has not changed their hard-driven industrial metal sound one bit. The opening track, “Supermanic Soul”, has old-school Ministry written all over it. They still have that same drill/nail gun guitar sound that rips through your soul, along with their usual pulverizing drums. Jourgensen’s gut wrenching riff is so nasty that it will instantly burn a hole in your stomach. If you take old classics like “The Missing”, “Diety”, and “Burning Inside”, you can explain “Supermanic Soul”. Everything about the song just overflows with intensity, even the title of the cut. This is the heaviest and most punishing song on the record, but quite a few other tracks ring loud and heavy. “Bad Blood”, which you may remember hearing on The Matrix soundtrack, is an arrangement of powerful metal rhythms and riffs. With “10/10”, Ministry produces a distorted guitar effect that sounds almost computer animated, but was probably wickedly dreamed up by Baker and Jourgenson while doodling in the studio. What really helps this tune out is that there is no singing, just straight industrial-metal instrumental.
On all of their records, from Twitch to Filth Pig, Ministry has always had songs that are complete head-trips, obscure and frightening. One of the best moments on Dark Side of the Spoon is the bizarre seven-minute long “Nursing Home”. The song is just freaking weird; there are pigs, some sort of barnyard animals, they may even be saxophones, making some fucked up noises. The bass line is where the money is at with “Nursing Home”. Baker’s bass tone is similar to “Lay Lady Lay”, but the newer style is dirtier and crustier. Ministry fans are sure to enjoy this track. Some may find the song to be trippy, others just downright crazy. The keyboards have this cool filler straight out of the horror films of Jason. If you want to get even freakier, skip ahead to “Vex and Siolence”. Al uses the typical faded and distorted vocals that have been with them since the beginning.
Ministry continues to produce records that no one can ever match, characteristically heavy and bizarre, within the genre of techno-industrial metal. If you like Filth Pig wholeheartedly, Dark Side of the Spoon will become one of your Ministry favorites. This album is fun (see the cover and the hidden track), and the music is powerfully malicious. Definitely a must buy.
+larry sarzyniak
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