…turns 30 today…unbelievable…just saw some post about it on blabbermouth…I can still remember the first time I heard it…I nearly shit myself…still sounds great after all these years…one of Al and Paul’s crowning achievements…
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Agreed. My favorite Ministry record and #2 record of all time. I remember hearing it and it just changed everything for me.
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And the tour that followed in support of Mind is probably one of the best.
this is my favorite ministry album. hands down. when i got this record, it blew my mind. it was everything i had always wanted to hear but didn’t know it. fast crunchy guitars with a sample of a drill bit panning on each speaker. hell yes. this album is in my top 5 all-time. everything was tuned in for the band. a record to be proud of.
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100 with this. My intro with Ministry and my favorite.
It still sounds fresh too.
Compare it to “Pretty Hate Machine,” which also came out in '89. PHM sounds like the last gasp of synth-pop, but Mind still seems innovative today.
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This was the latest Ministry album when I got into them. I remember riding my bike around small town Wisconsin listening to this on cassette. Twitch quickly became my favorite (I came from more electronic tastes than many here), but this Rape and Twitch are still the holy trinity of Ministry for me.
Listened to Mind last night on my fancy headphones. Agreed, it still sounds innovative and timeless. The production is so damn slick.
I also gave it a listen all the way through last night. I was once again in awe of how damn good it is. The production is absolutely amazing. When the drums kick in on Cannibal Song (which is criminally underrated BTW), you can’t help but tip your cap. Al and Paul were so far ahead of their time it was ridiculous. The balls it took to write an 8+ minute song like So What that had over 2 minutes of a spoken word sample in the beginning was a bold move. And they completely pulled it off.
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saw that tour , from what I mewmber was fuckin wicked
I got into Ministry right between LORAH and Mind. I heard Twitch first and loved it, went back and listened to With Sympathy and enjoyed the vintage disco synthpop, and then when I heard how heavy LORAH was I was blown away. Coming out of a lot of skate punk music, I loved how it fused electronics and fast and hard guitars. But that was nothing compared to when Mind hit.
The very first day the Burning Inside 12-inch hit the stores, my buddy Mike picked it up and were blasting it non-stop in our college dorm room. I couldn’t believe how fast it was…and then ther was Thieves on the other side! This was the kind of thing I wanted to hear. Down at our local club and after many requests from us, the DJ started playing the single. Me, Mike, and another guy we knew spontaneously started slamming in the middle of the dance floor. People stepped back and were kinda stunned. Then a few joined in. Next week, more people joined in. Pretty soon half the dance floor was a roiling pit, and things started to get out of control as some guys started getting into it just to try and hurt people. One broken tooth and a torn-in-half PTP shirt later, I decided it was time to step away. That’s about when the club put up notices banning slam dancing on pain of getting 86-ed from the club forever, so it was over anyway. But we couldn’t wait for the album to hit.
When Mind finally hit, we bought it as soon as it hit shelves. Have to admit it seemed like it had a lot of filler after the fury of the songs on the 12-inch, but So What was a big hit. I actually really really liked Dream Song, which seemed like it was a throwaway track for the band. In any case, the album pointed the way to more great things to come. In hindsight, for me Mind was more the pinnacle of where they were headed. The side projects seemed to getting crappier, and Psalm 69 was kind of a let-down to me apart from about 2-3 tracks (mainly the noise forest b-side Fucked, and JBMHR which should have been a RevCo song) as they seemed to be leaving the electronics behind in favor of second-rate recycled metal riffs. Of course I was in the minority, because that album went bigger than anything they’d done. Oh well.
–SKot
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I’m still baffled about Dream Song. It’s unusual that they would only make one song in that style. It’s a CD bonus track, and I want to think there’s more songs like it waiting to be heard.
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Yeah, I totally agree with you there. I do actually hear elements of it in Self Annoyed, which was apparently from 1987…so I think that at least pieces of Dream Song were from earlier maybe even than LORAH.
When Mind came out, my buddy bought the LP and I bought the CD. I was really happy to have that extra track, as well as the extras tracks that came on the LORAH CD when that finally came out.
–SKot
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30 years ago I DJ’d a college radio show where we counted down the Billboard Top 30 Modern Rock tracks. “Burning Inside” was in the countdown for several weeks during the winter of 1990. I wish I still had the playlists, but I remember Peter Murphy’s “Cuts You Up”. Nine Inch Nails “Down In It”, and Jesus & Mary Chain’s “Head On” all being in the weekly countdowns in January/February 1990. I remember the Music Director saying something to me like “can you believe how Ministry’s sound has changed?” We had all the Wax Trax! singles, Twitch, LoRAH, and With Sympathy in the station library. Sadly, I wasn’t able to make it to the live show at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis when the Mind tour came to town. I remember friends attending and remarking what an incredible show it was and that KMFDM was a great opener too.