I’m sure this has been discussed before, maybe on a previous incarnation of this board, but I’m curious to hear your “epiphany” stories; especially the younger members.
For myself, it was as a teenager watching Beavis and Butthead, and they played the Just One Fix video. I went out the next day and picked up the Psalm 69 cassette, and was hooked. Funnily enough, the very next thing I got was With Sympathy at a Kmart. I couldn’t believe this could possibly be the same band, not because I didn’t like it (I did), but because it was so different. How do you go from that to Psalm 69? I snatched up LORAH and Mind as soon as I could, and spent the next year or so tracking down a copy of Twitch. The progression started to shape up. “Okay,” I thought, “this has got to be the most interesting band ever! I can’t wait to see where they’re going next!”
Filth Pig was the first that I actually bought at release time (Psalm had been out a few months before surfacing on Beavis and Butthead), and I wasn’t disappointed, although I missed all the great electronic elements. Anyway, some years pass, I get into techno and jazz and get married and just generally have other stuff on my mind, when the Matrix comes out. On the soundtrack is a new song by Ministry! How exciting!
I didn’t like it. Because of Bad Blood, I never bothered to give Dark Side a chance (which is funny because it turned out to be the only song on there I don’t like). Animositisomina went completely over my radar (I live in Kentucky, no promotion here), so it wasn’t until last year’s tour that I got back into Ministry. My ex-wife got me into the show, and I was completely blown away. It was 2 days after Dime-Bag Darrell got killed, and the last show of the tour, so it was pretty intense. When they did Worthless, I was instantly converted all over again. Jesus Christ, what had I missed? The next day I rushed out and snatched up Animos and Houses and found Dark Side in a bargain bin for 5 bucks. I spent the next few months getting the actual 12" off ebay or wherever I could find them (I had a few from my DJ days), and for the last year I’ve listened to Ministry everyday. I can’t believe I went so long without it! Anyway, that’s my rebirth story, so tell me yours. Were there any periods you missed, or have you always been a diehard fan? How long? Favorite album? Ever listen to Filth Pig on heroin and somehow miss the irony there?
This lovely magazine called Rip that was big when I was a teen. It was a metal magazine, but far more intelligent than any other metal magazin, and in a good-humored non-self righteous kind of way. They were around when I was shifting away from Jr High butt-rock tendencies, and wanted music that was heavy, but more intelligent. For a metal magazine, Rip was pretty open-minded.
Rip had a story that made Ministry sound really intriguing and that was what got me started. Just off the type of my head, some of the other bands that I first heard of in that magazine that I still love include The Dwarves, L7, Atheist, The Melvins, Soundgarden (Louder Than Love era, before the grunge thing made them famous) Big Black and I even got my first Skinny Puppy tape because of a Rip story.
Because of that mag, (I was 16) I picked up Ministry’s Psalm 69 and Skinny Puppy’s Cleanse Fold & Manipulate. Fell in love with both albums immediately. Linked those two experiences personally, and was pretty stunned to find out a few years later that the bands had a history together.
Been a pretty constand fan since, forgot about them when Filth Pig came out as I was more into alternative rock and not that into heavy stuff, and heard that Filth Pig was a dumb metal album. It was really bashed pretty bad. Came back to them when Dark Side of the Spoon came out. Loved that album, decided to go back and check out Filth Pig, and kicked myself for letting those few years go by thinking about how I missed Ministry and hadn’t bothered to check out such a good album.
One of the more recent Ministry fan stories here, unlike most of you lot I’ve only been a fan for about a year or two. Also hopefully my story won’t lessen your opinion of me in anyway 
Pretty recently, maybe 2 years ago, I got into music that could maybe be called “good.” Before that I had been pretty disillusioned with the concept of music in general (mainly because I was still on 56k so the only real music I had access too was the mainstream radio, and here in Ireland there isn’t much else except for Mainstream Top 40 hits, and Mainstream Top 40 Disco hits from 25 years ago), with very very few bands actually pleasing my ears (I liked Moby and the Chemical Brothers.) Not long after that, I got broadband (Ireland is a veritable shithole, and affordable broadband only recently became available where I live, in the capital frickin’ city)
So anyway I got broadband, and I was downloading loads of stuff of the old P2Ps, mainly mainstream electronica like Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers and the likes. I also got into Gary Numan, after discovering there were more (and better) songs than just “Cars” Also, a foreign exchange student from Germany was at the school I was in, as is the custom of foreign exchange students, and the people in my class were telling about this crazy German band he listened to “Rammstein” Well they made it out to be some fucked up satanist shit, and anybody who listened to that had to be like, a total psycho, and would shoot up their school and such-what, and I thought, well this is a bit undeserving, surely they can’t be that bad. (Stuff like Rammstein never got played on the radio over here, neither did NIN or any others that might be known as “mainstream industrial-rock” by some. I think I heard Dope Show by Marilyn Manson once.) Well anyway, I checked out Rammstein, downloaded a couple of tracks of my P2P client Ares. At the time I thought they were pretty good, as a matter of fact I still do. It was at least, different to what I was listening too before, and I had more or less previously given up on any music played with guitars, since that meant more or less Blink 182 or The Offspring to my limited highschool radar.
So anyway I thought I would check out more of the stuff along the vein of Rammstein. (Of course my friends wre no use, all that they listened were the soundtracks to Japanese anime, although I was introduced to Kraftwerk and Atari Teenage Riot through one of them). So I took a look on the internet for more stuff like Rammstein, and pretty soon found this label "Industrial Music" being applied to Rammstein, as well as sometimes some of the later Gary Numan records that I had been listening too, and occasionally even ATR too. After more searching this term, I also discovered that Kraftwerk were considered important influences and precursors to the genre. Well in respect to the limited amount of stuff I was listening to at the time, this nearly represented 100% of my tastes at the time. So I thought I would check out who were other artists that would be considered "Industrial."
Well pretty soon, I discovered a recurring theme in internet fanboi wankery. First of all I was seeing stuff like "Rammstein aren't real industrial, they are a bunch of gay german nazi posers, check out Nine Inch Nails", and then "Nine Inch Nails aren't real Industrial, check out Ministry and Skinny Puppy", and then "Ministry isn't industrial, he is just a junky with a guitar, real industrial shouldn't have guitars, check out Einstuerzende Neubauten, Throbbing Gristle." and so forth.
About here I realised a couple of things.
Firstly fans of what they considered “industrial” had there own definiton of what it should sound like, shunned anything else that wasn’t part of their particular subgenre, and were in general elitist assholes. (Part of the reason I signed yp to prongs.org forums rather than the Piss Army, a lot of that elitist mentality seemed to go on there.)
Secondly, that Industrial as a genre was pretty meaningless. There were so many different subgenres, and different sounds, that simply labelling a band as industrial told you pretty much nothing about what the band would sound like.
So I decided I would check out some of this music next time I went to the music store. I had a list of names in my head, of all these bands, pretty much anything that had ever been described as industrial by some random mallgoth on his livejournal, names like Apoptygma Berzerk, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Front 242, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, VNV Nation,Laibach, K.M.F.D.M, Merzbow, whatever. So I go into HMV, and take a look around. Boy was I disappointed, not one of the bands on my “list” was present. (I later discovered that several of them were hiding in the Metal section of the store, even VNV Nation) .Well fortunately there was a second major record store in this One Horse Town, so I checked out Tower Records. When I was there I got a whole bunch of stuffs (well it was actually several visits over the space of about 2 weeks), ENs “Strategies Against Architecture Vol. II”, NINs “The Fragile”, Front 242 “Tyranny For You”, Skinny Puppy “Bites”, VNV Nation “Empires”, Laibach “Nova Akropola”, Assemblage 23 “Contempt”, K.M.F.D.M “Symbols” and Filth Pig by Ministry. (Why Filth Pig, you might ask? Well, all things being equal, I thought it had the coolest cover at the time :))
Well despite all the aural differences between these albums, there was a recurring theme, I loved them all! Sure some of the albums, like Neubauten and Laibach’s required repeated listenings before I “got” them, but eventually I ended up loving each and every one of them. To be honest, I couldn’t see any reason for all the elitism that pervaded in the “industrial” community, After all just because I loved the beautiful melodies on Empires, or the dirty electric guitar sounds on Filth Pig, didn’t mean that I ouldn’t appreciate the harsher sounds of the “original” bands. All of these new artists, these new sounds, they all sounded absolutely amazing to my unaccustomed ears, revolutionary even. Also they also played up to my other interests, science fiction, cyberpunk novels, horror movies, decay, technology etc., themes that would hardly be explored with the Top 20 Shitmakers. So I came to realise pretty quickly, that not all music, was in a word, bollocks. Pretty soon I was spending nearly all of my (admittedly meager) allowance on new records, in all kinds of genres. (Unlike a lot of people who seemed reluctant to listen to anything outside their chosen sanctum, be it old-school industrial, 60/70’s Blues and Hardrock, Techno what-have-you.
However there was one band that I kept coming back too (well several actually) I loved Ministry, and I loved the sound of the Filth Pig album, the guitars seemed to literally drip of malevolance and animosity. I read somewhere that Filth Pig was considered by many to be a somewhat disappointing album, a poor follow up to their hit Psalm 69. So I got a copy of Psalm 69, and to be honest, I prefered Filth Pig. It seemed to have more constitency to the sound, rather than Psalm 69, which seemed to go all over the place with its sound.Nevertheless, I loved it all the same, and saying I was “disappointed” with it is like saying you would be disappointed with “only” winning a quarter million in a lottery. So since I was already going in a backwards direction I thought I would check out LORAH (they didnt have Mind at that time.) Well here it had the same problem as Psalm 69, that the sound seemed to be all over the place, but nevertheless I loved this record, from the angry shouts on Stigmata and the guitars on Deity, to the bizzare electronic mayhem of I Prefer and Flashback. It was this album that really got me hooked on Ministry, and since then I decided to go on and get the rest of their discography. (This was pretty recently,a few months back, so I have only gotten Mind and Houses since, as Ministry stuff is hard to find over here (and RevCo, Lard etc. even moreso)
At the moment Mind is probably my favourite Ministry album.
Can’t say that I have had the pleasure of seeing them live yet, but I will be sure to catch them the next time they play Dublin (yeah right, like they are gonna play here anytime soon, though I did make the excursion to London in August to see Skinny Puppy)
Have never listened to Filth Pig on heroin, nor did I miss the irony while not engaging in said act.
I’m sure this has been discussed before, maybe on a previous incarnation of this board, but I’m curious to hear your “epiphany” stories; especially the younger members.
kudos for starting a thread which prompts board members to relate their entire life history, ol’ chap.
Mine was no ‘epiphany’ (c’mon it’s j-just m-music fer crisse-sakes!!). I’d heard of 'em around 1990 when I was a bored teen, cos I liked Swans and Godflesh etc at the time. Ministry seemed to get mentioned in the same breath as those bands in alt-press type mags. So checking them out seemed like a logical conclusion.
Sometime around '91, a guy across the street started playing ‘Thieves’ while we were smoking weed in his room one night and the rest is history…
It was around the same time that I first heard the Butthole Surfers ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ which probably had more of an impact on me than anything Ministry ever did.
Yeah, good call on Butthole Surfers, though I didn’t get into them until later (around '93 or so). And I agree about Kill Uncle (other thread), it had potential. As for the ‘epiphany’ thing, I’m half joking and half not. I kinda figured to even bother posting on here the music probably had at least some influence on you, some more than others, but I know it means a lot to me. BT and John Digweed actually had more influence as to what MY music sounds like, but there’s still nothing better than cranking up some Al & Co.
I got into Ministry around '94, just after my 18th birthday. I’d heard of them before but figured they were waaaay too metal for my liking(I was living in Brixton UK and listening to The Church, The Cure, The Smiths, The Fall, (mid period)Killing Joke, Wire, Pixies and Husker Du).
Then late one night I was listening to a waaay cool Scottish indie/industrial radio program, which at the time had an audience of about twenty fans, and the dj played Cannibal Song.
Well…
To say that I was impressed is putting it EXTEMELY lightly. In fact, if push came to shove, I’d say I was mesmerised. Can’t remember being that impressed being that impressed by a track since hearing The Headmaster Ritual by the Smiths.
So I called up the radio station and then spent the best part of half an hour talking to the dj about industrial music (which at the time I thought was the type of music that snotty, no talent music journo hacks listened to just to get a kick out of watching people’s horrified reactions to).
He suggested I check out Ministry’s back catalogue and also gave me a list of other bands to go forth and ‘discover’, such as Godflesh, Test Dept, Swans, Neubauten, TG and Front 242.
And I can’t say I’ve ever looked back.
Sometime in the early 90’s…
That time I was mostly into rap / hip-hop…
RUN-DMC, Beastie Boys, Tone Loc’ and such…
One day my big brother came home with a CD with a angel-something on the cover.
I still remember what he said…
“hey, come and have a listen at this… I got this cd from a feind of mine calld psykola” <- in swedish
The cd was Psalm69…
ok… I sat on the floor and made myself ready for what I supposed was some kind of death-metal-satanic-music…
It was realy quick and painless… the first 10 seconds of the first song made it for me… I was in love.
1st heard “Over the Shoulder” at nightclubs circa 88-89 but didn’t know who the band was. College buddy popped LORAH in my dormroom tape deck on night and we played it full blast for several hours, prompting a response by the dorm security. Next day I bought my own copy of LORAH (first of two copies to get worn out that year). Another buddy introduced me to 12" singles. “Mind” came out around that time. Group of us went to the show when Al and the boys came into town (Openers Skatenings & KMFDM. Joining on stage - Ogre and Jello). Been a die hard fan since.
Around the era of LORAH someone made me a mix tape with “Stigmata” on it. Nuff said.
Like many people my age (19), I heard Nine Inch Nails on the radio and was like “woah what is this…not techno…not metal…something new”
Started to make mixes of what I thought was called “Electronic Rock” wiith other mainstream bands like Orgy and Rob Zombie.
Then I saw the video for “What About Us” on Much Music and the same day I found out that the “Electronic Rock” I liked was really called Industrial Metal.
After that I was hooked.
Wasn’t going to share this because it’s kind of redundant (so many of us kiddies got into industrial through NIN…so fuck you to all NIN haters, not to mention that they gave Coil, Einsturzende Nuebauten and others some recognition via Nothing Records)…
But I thought it might interest people to know that they still do go get some mainstream promotion despite everyone’s dislike for Sanctuary. I’ve also seen videos of “Just 1 Fix” and “N.W.O” in irregular rotation on thst stupid Uranium show with that wannabe rivet bitch Julia.
Oh, and there is a Ministry sticker in Jack Black’s van in the movie School of Rock [cool]…guess the guy’s a fan!!!
My brother-in-law was in rehab and I had access to all his CDs in the meantime.[:P]
I was at a record/CD fair in Brandon, MB in 1991 or maybe 1992. One of the guys there (who ran the best record store in town) was selling a bunch of his stuff.
I was flipping through his discs when I saw an interesting album - Revolting Cocks Big Sexyland. I asked the guy about it, he asked me if I’d heard of Ministry. I’d heard of JBMHR at that time, so had some inkling of them. He said that this album was done by some of the same people in Ministry. I bought it, loved it, bought In case… the next week (only Ministry album the local stores had in stock), and quickly bought as much Ministry as I could find.
This must’ve been late 1991 or early 1992 because Psalm 69 wasn’t out yet - I remember seeing it on the shelves months later and thinking “wow, new Ministry!”
I was a lifeguard for the city and there was this older dude who always had cool weird music. I was strictly GNR and I loved the Queensryche Empire album. anyway I came in one day on break (summer of 92) and the only thing to listen to was the discman from the guy who listened to cool weird music (my batteries for my WALKMAN) were dead. So I just pressed play on the Discman and the first track I heard was N.W.O and I was hooked! I had never heard music like that before. I found out what group it was started digging around for other same type music and I’ve been a fan ever since. that one weird music guy went to college (he was a year older) (off to Berekely) where he apparently majored in hardcore drugs 101. last I heard he had crap all stuck up in his face his skin is pockmarked and scarred from many a nights suffering from too much speed and falling victim to pickers syndrome. and I used to think he was a cool dude around school cause he was funny. I didn’t know he was a junkie and that was the real reason he was cool.
Late,
grmpysmrf
I was standing at the bar in Neo.
And Al asked me if I could play anything.
[laugh]
but he’s right!!
I heard the cassette of In Case . . . and I was hooked. Still my fav Ministry and the best Live album ever. In Case and Its Alive by the Ramones are the only great live albums I consistently listen to.
They shatter the studio tracks.
I first caught wind of Ministry back in '94 when my brother’s friend insisted he play a bunch of “Jesus Built My Hot Rod” and Danzig at his Trade Fair booth in school. (Trade Fair was a mock-business project. My brother business was a music store.)
I never really got into them because of that, but sometimes one of the supervisors at our youth center would play their stuff. I thought it was okay. He even played “Everyday Is Halloween”, and told me of how Ministry used to sound like complete dung.
Then in '99, I saw that Ministry was going to be playing a concert. I wasn’t too stoked about that, but I was thrilled to pieces about getting a chance to see opening band Atari Teenage Riot, a band that I missed in concert two years previous. I REALLY wanted to go to that concert, and figured that Ministry would be, well, worth seeing. I was blown away, and ended up buying “The Mind…” the week after. That pretty much sealed my fate…