Mandi Martyr has been announced as the new touring bassist for industrial/metal band MINISTRY, filling the void left by the absence of Tony Campos. Campos was announced in May of 2015 as the new bassist for fellow industrial/metal band Fear Factory, while Martyr has been a professional bassist in the punk/metal community since 2001. She has performed with the likes of Japanese acts Another Destructive System (featuring Riley Baxter of ZILCH) and Violet UK – a band featuring Yoshiki Hayashi amd Sugizo of X-Japan, Wes Borland, and Richard Fortus of Guns ‘n’ Roses – performing three sold-out shows at the Tokyo Dome in 2008. In addition, she is the wife of drummer Aaron Rossi and former owner of Crimson Reign Tattoo.
I don’t know anything about her talent or lack thereof, but I did groan a bit when I read this. It just seemed to me a classic case of Ministry laziness and penny-pinching. I suspect that she’s doing it for the exposure/ resume building (both completely understandable) and Ministry is just all-too-happy to have someone do it at the lowest cost. Given recent fiascos from team Ministry I wouldn’t even flinch if I found out they ran it like Sharon Osbourne’s pay-to-play second stage action . . . that is, they actually CHARGED her to be on tour.
Anyway, I wish her the best and congratulate her on the spot, but I’m certainly not celebrating this as a “win” for the fans.
I suspect that she’s doing it for the exposure/ resume building (both completely understandable) and Ministry is just all-too-happy to have someone do it at the lowest cost. Given recent fiascos from team Ministry I wouldn’t even flinch if I found out they ran it like Sharon Osbourne’s pay-to-play second stage action . . . that is, they actually CHARGED her to be on tour.
Anyway, I can’t imagine that changing the live bassist at this point is going to have any noticeable influence on Ministry’s sound.
At first I thought Mandi might be the first woman to be a touring member of Ministry (doing something other than backing vocals), but of course Patti Jourgensen played keyboards on the 1984 tour, and Tia Sprocket was the drummer for the first 13 dates of the 2003 tour. Still, it’s been a while.
[reply]I suspect that she’s doing it for the exposure/ resume building (both completely understandable) and Ministry is just all-too-happy to have someone do it at the lowest cost. Given recent fiascos from team Ministry I wouldn’t even flinch if I found out they ran it like Sharon Osbourne’s pay-to-play second stage action . . . that is, they actually CHARGED her to be on tour.
She’s married to Ministry’s drummer.[/reply]
Yeah, I know that. And that is one more aspect of annoyance for me. It just feels so lazy. It’s also ironic and kind of silly that this supposed badass band that used to symbolize chaos and debauchery is now kind of the Partridge Family bus with a bunch of straight-edge people and parents changing diapers and whatnot.
Who cares, though . . . I’m sick of giving a shit about any of the shenanigans with this band. It’s only become fodder for my practice one-liners as I train to take Scott Ian’s place on “Ministry’s Top 50 Retarded Blunders”.
Ultimately I’ll judge the “product” when I see it on stage (which seems less likely now as their Vegas plan has gone belly-up).
At first I thought Mandi might be the first woman to be a touring member of Ministry (doing something other than backing vocals), but of course Patti Jourgensen played keyboards on the 1984 tour, and Tia Sprocket was the drummer for the first 13 dates of the 2003 tour. Still, it’s been a while.
Yeah, and i was thinking that this was the first husband and wife to play in Ministry, i’d forgotten about Mrs Jourgensen [:)]
[reply]At first I thought Mandi might be the first woman to be a touring member of Ministry (doing something other than backing vocals), but of course Patti Jourgensen played keyboards on the 1984 tour, and Tia Sprocket was the drummer for the first 13 dates of the 2003 tour. Still, it’s been a while.
Yeah, and i was thinking that this was the first husband and wife to play in Ministry, i’d forgotten about Mrs Jourgensen [:)][/reply]
Angie (most recent ex-Jourgensen) too would, at least on the Evil Doer (2004) tour get up and play violin or wave pompoms on stage during a few numbers. But as she was manager and so forth (in addition to Al’s wife and babysitter) she was on the road with them regardless.
If you can handle the mid-90’s HTML red-on-black eye-rape, this interview is the most informative (sort of also the ONLY) source for answering who is she and what has she done, etc. . . .
I’d written this about a week ago. I’ll leave it unedited as it’s funnier now that Boot Camp has actually been CANCELED.
Back to the original post and my thoughts on this . . . I see it as laziness and stagnation, something that gets more and more prevalent with Ministry/ Al every year. Ministry USED TO be about varied and sometimes clashing styles, visions, and personalities, and that was one of the dynamics which brought some very exciting results. I don’t think everyone were good buddies in the band. Far from it. But their wild uniqueness and Al’s ability to still channel that chaos into something wonderful was pure magic.
Thirteenth Planet was a joke, as far as I’m concerned. There were like 2 or three bands, all with the same 3 or 4 members. No looking outside. No challenging of barriers and limits. FBTE was a nice change of pace and did give us a last taste of creativity. But since then Ministry has (now on their 52nd retirement) now become a floating barge instead of a battleship of destruction.
Al and his old lady (or maybe I should say ESPECIALLY his old lady) serve us empty platters with sides of luke warm milk and expect us to throw money at it simply because of who he WAS. I was fine with them breaking retirement (again) and continuing the touring, but I see no new passion and it seems like they care less and less.
This Vegas Boot Camp thing is a silly and poorly planned cash grab. And instead of working hard to show us that it might actually be something that would be a worthy investment, they show us that they are tired and old. So . . . you get to sit around with a bunch of “married” couples being bossed around?
I don’t know how good Mandi is. But I don’t expect it to be anything mind blowing (I’d like to be shown wrong). I think that they put her in because it was the cheapest and easiest way to plug a hole. For crying out loud, they might even have FANS performing the songs on stage.
Is this a real band still or an after school project to save a youth center?
Yes, I’m jaded and don’t tell me not to be, because in the last 10 years every time I think they’ve hit the bottom of the barrell, they cut the bottom off the barrell and start tunnelling to the center of the Earth.
Thanks. I looked up “Mandi Martyr” on Discogs and couldn’t find anything, but it looks like her work in Violet UK is credited under the name Amanda Frei. And according to Discogs, Violet UK’s entire recorded output is three songs that they released digitally in the late 2000s, so that’s not a ton to be “best known for.”
The new band “Naked Death” is basically the same band as the current Ministry live band excluding Al. I guess I’ll give 'em a listen if they release something.
The new band “Naked Death” is basically the same band as the current Ministry live band excluding Al. I guess I’ll give 'em a listen if they release something.
Yeah, that actually was the most interesting part to me too. It will depend on who they get to front it, but I’d like to see what they do with that. I don’t know if there’s any contracts barring them from it or anything, but I think they could do some small sell-out gigs if they’d just get a semi-capable frontman and then do all the Ministry songs that everyone wants to hear but never gets to.
The fact that her bio lists her husband’s tattooing fame seems kind of sad / irrelevant. Like if I was putting together a P.R. one-sheet for my music and it also mentioned my skill as a pastry chef.
I really wish whoever writes these press releases would try to give people at least SOME idea of how she actually sounds or what she brings to the group, other than just name-dropping. Like, is she going to wow us all with hyper-complex slap-'n-pop bass solos, or bulldoze us into submission with her trademark sludgy tone, or come out of left field with the innovative string-tapping technique she learned as a student of Doug Wimbish?
“Um…let me get back to you on that, and…hey, look! TATTOOS!!!” replies the p.r. man…
Literally the ONLY reason I knew the name when it was announced was because she was one of the ladies who echoed “THE PERFEEEECCCTTT STOOORRRMMM!!!” on stage at one of the concerts. She was drowned out and pretty irrelevant in my opinion (if she had a great voice I didn’t hear it because . . . well, I just couldn’t hear it). But she stomped and emoted herself like it was the gig of a lifetime and she was center stage.
It’s also ironic and kind of silly that this supposed badass band that used to symbolize chaos and debauchery is now kind of the Partridge Family bus …
Thanks. I looked up “Mandi Martyr” on Discogs and couldn’t find anything, but it looks like her work in Violet UK is credited under the name Amanda Frei. And according to Discogs, Violet UK’s entire recorded output is three songs that they released digitally in the late 2000s, so that’s not a ton to be “best known for.”
The new band “Naked Death” is basically the same band as the current Ministry live band excluding Al. I guess I’ll give 'em a listen if they release something.
To be fair, there’s a lot of Japanese material that doesn’t make it up onto Discogs. When I buy weird random shit at Book OFF, I can’t find it on Discogs about as often as I can.
Umm…come to Brooklyn…I’ll show you “hipster”. No hipster be she.
Looks more like a “suicide girl” or nu metal princess.
Considering everyone on this board is now a raging feminist (based on the Gira rape thread) I’m surprised you guys are judging her on her appearance! Shouldn’t you be rooting for this strong, empowered female!??
