So I finally got the Overflow bootleg (yea!! 29 down 4 to go!) and I open it up and there is this article about the show pictured on the fold out. the entire article is posted titled Brixton Academy July, 18 1996:
Check it out!
Ask anyone, the industrial revolution was fantastic. One minute we were stuck in Retrogressive World, the Next we’d been invaded by leather-clad loonies bellowing obscenities about an imminent robot invasion. Fine times, indeed, as these unpleasantly hirsute men (and they were always men) conclusively proved that computer driven death metal was a strangely exhilarating experience.
But one band towered above them all. Al Jourgensen’s Ministry were the filthiest, noisiest, and quite possibly silliest of the bunch. Jesus had allegedly built their hotrod, and the fully intended to speed around the world scaring people with it. Along the way Al ranted about ‘thieves’, shooting up (‘just one fix’) and eating people (‘Cannibal Song’). And when he wasn’t doing that he was, quite literally, being a Revolting Cock.
And that, in many ways, was the whole point. Al had ingeniously pinpointed liberals [grmpysmrf’s note: I think the author of this article meant to write conservatives…how many suit and tie people ever go to Ministry? Al ain’t bitchin’ about Mike Moore!] as the real troublemakers within modern society, and so he set out to irritate them all by talking about drugs and swearing a lot. Shock tactics, though inevitably wear off. And as their recent ‘Filth Pig’ album suggested, the only people currently still interested in his antics are Neanderthal weightlifters with a penchant for stretchy, black clothing.
And judging by the vast acres of the empty Academy, not even they fancied the prospect of seeing Al bludgeon them in the face with a gigantic spade as part of the Ministry Live Experience. Frankly, though, who can blame them? Not even Al’s bothered to turn up. Instead he sent along Gary Oldman dressed as a crusty Dracula to fill in for him. Although we might be mistaken, because this rather hunched, little character is ostensibly doing many of the things we used to worship al for doing: Smoking many fags, shouting expletives and playing a fabulous selection of horrendously turgid riffs.
Hold on, scratch that last one, because what used to be good about Ministry was the clinical inhumanity of their sound. Their bonkers, platinum-coated juggernaut of nonsense was the only good thing about them. In this particular case, size was everything. So, it comes as a gross disappointment to find that their futuristic sci-fi mayhem has now been replaced by three fatties laboriously grinding out stodgy riffs from the new album (‘Crumbs’, ‘We Fall’). Still, even that’s better than the inclusion of the elongated harmonica solo’s (‘Filth Pig’) and the sight of fake Al doing a ridiculous little jig every few seconds or so.
When you come to see Ministry, you want to be scared, you want to cower in the face of Al’s offal-ridden microphone and, more persistently, you want to hear some old songs. Hopes rise slightly then, as Al starts repeatedly screaming, “Retaliate!” during ‘Thieves’, it’s the cue for young men to flash their greasy pectorals and for all attempts at subtlety to be indefinitely shelved. ‘Just One Fix’ is accompanied by enormous images of plunging syringes, a 15 minute, ’So What” is augmented by the appropriate shoulder-shrugging and ‘Scarecrow’ is stretched out to a comically-funeral pace. “You like the fast ones, don’t you?” enquires Al. “We’ll do a slow one then.”
Ah yes, that legendary attitude does finally surface. But unfortunately that just means he doesn’t play any of the hits and reduces everything to one long attritional slog. No ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’, No ‘Stigmata’ and definitely no ‘Lay Lady Lay’. Still it can’t be easy gooning around, pretending to be a Very Frightening Man at Al’s age. In fact, the whole sorry pantomime is doubtless, extremely embarrassing, and demeaning for him. What’s more, in the very near future, it won’t even be making him any more cash.
Al surely realizes that the game’s up. Liberals [grmpysmrf: again, I think he means conservatives] no longer run scared from his Satanic hotrod, and his only friends are a dwindling band of cider-snorting Goths who’ve only come to hear the ‘hits’.
They won’t be coming back. Industrial music has just become obsolete.
PULEASE JUST LEAVE MINISTRY ALONE!!
HAHA
I guess this setlist nastiness really has gone round before!
It’s funny to see that article in a Ministry CD though…You’d figure you’d see something like that in some ministry Competitor’s CD
just thought I’d share.
Late,
grmpysmrf