MINISTRY レコード& CD

Review: "A record that sounds like dystopia", painting "a bleak portrait of an America that is on the brink of implosion" wrote one critic after first hearing AmeriKKKant, the 14th studio album by the mighty Ministry. If this is your first encounter with the record, it should take exactly two tracks to understand what said scribe - penning prose for The Spill Magazine - was getting at. There's anger, trouble, rage, frustration, disillusionment and a rallying war cry to stand up and stop the decline of Western civilisation at the hands of populists and fundamentalists running through every bar of every track. More so, this is also about standing tall and representing what constitutes an LP. Far more than a vessel for singles, AmeriKKKant is long form expression in the truest sense. Not necessarily a journey into industrial metal and sample-oriented experimental rock, but a manifesto for what they can represent.

Review: Ministry have always enjoyed playing with album titles - 1989's The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste being one of the best examples. They've also evolved from a synth pop outfit at the turn of that decade into one of the pre-eminent industrial rock and metal bands of the following ten years, a process that helps them stand out among a scene that became increasingly saturated as time progressed.

Never by-numbers, then, and always looking to experiment with effects, samples, and structure, on stage their reputation for being uncompromisingly Ministry precedes them, and here's at least some form of proof. Sphinctour (lol) is an 11 track album containing recordings from various live shows across the globe, each of which invokes the atmosphere and gargantuan power of the outfit in question, with the only real problem being the fact you probably weren't there to see these shows happen.