How anyone can sit and say Jourgensen did nothing with “Thrash” is beyond me.
Maybe it’s because I’m coming from a musician and producer stand point.
A lot of the production style I heard Jourgensen pumping into notably the last release really reminded me of the Psalm and Mind days. Even writing wise, it remided me much of Psalm, but simply faster (with poorer lyrics).
One of the things this is to say however, was it wasn’t something to expect hearing out of a typical metal band. Why? Simple; it was to electronic.
Again, maybe this is because I’m coming from a musician/production stand point, but the fact of the matter was though you weren’t hearing prominent synth lines all over the place, much like with Psalm, Rio had a HEAVY basis on electronic instrumentation (which granted, nowadays doesn’t exactly require hardware instrumentation).
The Bush samples and such are obvious, but those aren’t what I’m talking about for the most part. Nope, strip all those samples out and I would challenge anyone to recreating what the songs on that album with simply traditional metal instrumentation (electric guitars, drums, etc.) I think it’d quickly become obvious how electronic that album was and how that effected the sound I think would quickly become much more readily apparent.
Frankly, I hadn’t heard Ministry have that much of an electronic basis since Psalm 69.
Now something I found bad about Ministry’s last effort was the simple fact that it didn’t really seem to be anything all that new to the table. Like I said, in listening to it, much of what I heard, in regard to how it was written and in it’s production value, ultimately just had me thinking
“Huh…Psalm 69 on meth”.
To that same end though, I’ll confess, the last Ministry album that I felt was beyond exceptional was Psalm 69; and in this vein, I’ll confess that if Al felt like picking up the pieces of the past and pushing them a lil further/in a new direction, picking up with Psalm isn’t a bad pick as far as I’m concerned.
How fans of the heavier aspects of Mind could go unsatisfied with baffle me as well.
Simple basis of repeatitive riffs; with those riffs typically broken into partials in verse sections and then played in constants outside of verses? Yep check. (this formula, like I said, was all over Psalm 69; but eh, it was a key component of things like Burning Inside as well).
High lack of guitar solos, and when those solos appear a maintaining of the key all backing parts were originally in coupled with only a SHORT solo? Yep check. (Solos were pretty much barren on Mind, and again, when it came to Psalm, this was pretty much how they worked).
And you really could go ahead and break the formulas down more in similar fashions. Like I said, the MAJOR difference (that I spotted) came in a mere BPM scale more than anything.
Lot of you really didn’t make much of the album I gather.
Me, I sincerely thought that for the first time in a long time, Ministry had pumped out one of the best albums of the year.
One thing I don’t get, is well, the amount of people that don’t think they’ve done anything GREAT since Twitch. I mean in my view, I really don’t know why on earth that over 20 years after Twitch’s release you’re still listening to them. LORAH hit, and granted really only the first three of it’s songs were “industrial metal” per say, but Ministry pretty much made it’s focus exploring that area from then on.
There was a darn noticable shift after Psalm, and I recall even seeing a statement from Paul to the effect of they had taken that idea of theirs to brink. They really didn’t know how to expand on it. And given the amount of time Psalm took (yes, of course miss H being partially behind that) coupled with they really were in a state of “Well…so we’ve taken this ‘industrial metal’ concoction up to this point, what now?”; they shifted gears.
Far as I’m concerned, they never truly left the “industrial metal” thing they had kick started, as elements of that ALWAYS remained in their sound; but I can give a nod to Barker’s sentiments as LORAH -> MIND -> 69 all sorta had linear progression (IMO). Filth, it was obvious they weren’t trying to continue that progression.
Rio in my mind, like I said, really sorta fell back in line with that ol progression. LORAH -> MIND -> 69 -> RIO.
The only thing being that where as the stride taken from 69 to RIO was considerably shorter in length than all the parts of the progression made previously.
It’s like with Puppy, I look at Puppy and I really see Last Rights sort of in the same mind as Ministry’s 69. It was the culmination of a progression (that was stayed on a lot longer in Puppy’s case). They wrapped that up, and though Key and Dwayne I think continued on with that progression BRIEFLY (first two Download releases; first in particular), I point had been hit of “O.K., so this is what we were looking for…well that and the journey to it were cool; now lets start a new journey to a different destination.”
And in their case, I think that can be seen again, where you had the incomplete Process album. Then Greater Wrong, which was sort of a “We did the Process right”. And then Myth, which was sort of a continuation of further seeing how they could expand on the basis they had decided to explore back with the Process.
And while many sit going “OH GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING!”
I mean really, what’s the point of behavior like that?
In the end, there’s two ends of the spectrum, art for arts sake, and art for the people. Rare is the person that sits totally on either extreme, but typically one is going to find themselves leaning more heavily towards one extreme than the other.
The people breaking barriers are typically going to be those that leaned more towards the art for arts sake side of things…they’re willing to hit off into new areas regardless of what people think. And that’s what makes those artist unique. Now you can jump on board with them, know that you’re not going to be getting the same thing over and over, and see if you enjoy part of the journey they go on. Or you can jump off and just latch on to something that’s a hell of a lot more stable.
I’m more partial to going on rides with unknown destinations; again, sort of why I find a bit of disappointment with Rio (outside of it’s lyrical content). NOT that it wasn’t a different spin on Thrash…but simply that it pulled to heavily from techniques and writing styles exhibited by J and co. back in 92.
Why did keep up with Ministry despite not thinking anything beyond exceptional since 69? Simple, they kept the destination unknown; and any artist willing to do that will keep my interest.
Never mind all that.