Ministry

It's a widely held opinion that the Eighties were the poorest decade in the history of rock music: obviously true if you stop at its glossy, ultra-commercial surface (as is also the case, for that matter, with the most celebrated decades that came before), but if you dig a little deeper — and not even all that deep — you'll discover that the so-called "underground" world produced quite a few authentically revolutionary works.

One of these was without doubt "The Land of Rape and Honey", the third effort from the Ministry project, led by the brilliant and unruly frontman Al Jourgensen, here for the first time flanked with talent and discretion by the excellent Paul Barker, who would remain his alter ego for many years. The fruit of a total deconstruction and recombination of musical genres, the album presents itself, starting from the title itself (which inevitably recalls the gentle "In The Land Of Grey And Pink" by Caravan), as a genuine manifesto for destabilizing rock conventions.

The lyrics, which at first glance seem like nothing more than furious tirades loaded with violence and misanthropy, actually build a deep and painfully pessimistic reflection on the ever-growing dehumanization of modern society. The world portrayed in this work is one plagued by tyranny and oppression, by rage and ruthlessness, where human beings themselves have turned into robots devoid of feelings and emotions. To render such an apocalyptic scenario in the most fitting way, Jourgensen and Barker opt for a musical approach built around a total, "scientific" annihilation of the genres most in vogue in the underground of the time: hardcore and thrash, with their direct, uncompromising violence, and industrial, which is the exact opposite, being related to the most cerebral avant-garde, yet also the technological and "inhuman" genre par excellence. Jourgensen understands that, however far apart, these styles share the very same goal that is also his own: subversion, as total, radical and drastic as possible.

It's only logical, then, that the duo structure the album starting from a more human, direct and "hard" approach, before gradually arriving at a sound that has nothing human left in it — not even violence.

The first three tracks form a sequence that instantly ranks among the peaks of the American underground of the era: "Stigmata" tears out of the gate with a dirty, brutal, propulsive cadence, its "artificial" riff and Jourgensen's filtered voice sardonically leading the dance; the following "Missing" and "Deity" instead launch into epileptic, lightning-fast, majestic speed-metal frenzies. It's in these tracks that hardcore, thrash and industrial lose their separate identities and merge into a wholly innovative sound, even if for now the "rock" component still has the upper hand. But from here on, thematically, the album becomes a progressive march toward the total triumph of inhumanity, and musically it turns into an almost unbroken sequence of genuine avant-garde masterpieces.

The long, extraordinary "Golden Dawn" is a breathtaking ride through America's wildest, most desolate wastelands, seasoned with chaotic samples; "Destruction" is a veritable essay on dissonance, made of frantic off-beats, scattered clangs and terrifying screams that also seem to dissolve into the void; another great feat of sonic (de)construction is "Hizbollah", an Eastern-tinged digression complete with a muezzin's call creating an atmosphere of unsettling exoticism, while the entirely synthetic rhythmic base advances relentlessly, generating almost unbearable suspense. This brings us to the title track, with Jourgensen's voice hurling invective over an exhausting rhythm, over yet another dense downpour of samples, over slogans screamed at the top of his lungs: the atmosphere is that of a rally staged by a totalitarian regime.

But it's with "You Know What You Are" that technology finally takes complete control: here every sound, especially the vocals, is deconstructed, chopped up, filtered and utterly distorted: the rhythm comes from a simple, enveloping synth line (and just how much bands like Nine Inch Nails owe to Ministry becomes truly evident here), but what dominates are the extraordinary vocal effects, staged with exceptional dramatic flair: the lyrics are recited by a chilling chorus of merciless androids delivering the coup de grâce to humanity ("ignore the pain, ignore the terror, we saw the tears lost in their eyes"), while in the background a mocking laugh and a single, isolated human voice desperately scream the title phrase. On these tracks Ministry manage to set to music the future predicted by writers like Ballard, Dick or William Gibson, establishing themselves as the musical standard-bearers of the cyberpunk movement, which in the second half of the Eighties was living its golden age.

The fast, devastatingly effective "I Prefer" is the track that marks humanity's total surrender ("have you run into the human condition, and i raise the white flag and that's the way i prefer flagellation"). Jourgensen closes the record by plunging into the searing neuroses of "Flashback", perhaps the harshest, most violent track on the whole record, steeped in a hatred and rage as impotent as it is terrifying. Finally, there's still room for an unsettling little synth-pop instrumental interlude, "Abortive": a sardonic farewell to whatever hopes you had when you walked in.

Overall, this album marks an unprecedented musical achievement: by embracing the dirtiest, meanest strain of rock, Ministry — until then an electronic act — managed to make an abrasive, intellectual genre like British-school industrial music (the domain of pioneers Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire) accessible to a young "alternative" rock audience; conversely, then, they also lent the more t(h)rashy strands of American rock a cultured, innovative stature that was certainly far removed from the genre's usual premises. Their future work would be crowned by commercial success too, but was destined to run dry, though there'd be no shortage of sporadic flashes of brilliance, dictated by the talent of two chaotically gifted minds: this album (paired with its even nastier twin, "The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste", released a year later) remains their masterpiece, as well as one of the greatest musical testaments to the flame that animated the underground of the Eighties, far from the eyes of those who viewed that decade as an era of shallowness and conformism.

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02/11/2006