In Praise of...The Land of Rape and Honey by Ministry

This is nuts ... if anything, those first three songs have been retroactively taken down a few notches because of the markedly better live versions on "In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up" (and their regular inclusion in many a fierce live set).

Well, this is the only Ministry album I own and I've never even heard of that live album, so you're going to have to talk down to me a bit here.

I dunno. I don't even remember what the rest of the album is like. "Stigmata" destroys all. I wanna do a karaoke of that someday.

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This is a high and widly inaccurate complement towards Depeche Mode.

wow, I never noticed that before. I've always just seen the cover as these blurry abstract blue n purple streaks.

this is a good album. but I never listen to it. on the rare occasion I do put Ministry on it's usually either the unpronouncable album or "In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up".

It came out in 1990, following "The Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Taste", so if you've heard "Burning Inside" or "Thieves", then that's a fairly good representation of what the live album sounds like. Take "Stigmata", add about four more guitars, rock the hell out, and make it ten minutes long. The definitive version, IMO.

FUCK REAGAN, FUCK GORBACHEV, FUCK ALL THESE ASSHOLES, FUCK YOU, FUCK ME ...

I miss the 80's all of a sudden.

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While the singles and first side of Twitch were good Einsturzende/Tackhead style industrial synth dance pop, like a more caustic Depeche Mode, you can NOT forget the noisy trifecta that ended that album: "Crash And Burn/Where You At Now/Twitch". Al has stated in public constantly at how Adrian Sherwood was a humongous influence to him... In fact, Al Jourgensen was a guest keyboardist on the Barmy Army's The English Disease (1989)..(The Barmy Army being one of a gazillion aliases for Adrian Sherwood and gang). Remember that the same On-U Sound gang also was at the helm of Mark Stewart + Maffia's 1985 noise-beat-blast As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade...

If there wasn't a Twitch or Pailhead, there would not have been a The Land Of Rape And Honey. (in fact, Al had to confer with Ian Mackaye for advice on whether to take this major label extension for the new "metallic" Ministry.. Ian, who had just released the first Fugazi record, unsurprisingly was urging Al not to do it. Al took the bait, for better or worse.)

oddly enough, i was just listening to "beers, steers, and queers" with a friend last night.

massive xpost

dood the 80s are all around us to a sickening degree, at the moment.

This thread is bearing out that the live version of "Stigmata" was pretty much the apex of Ministry. I remember being a young, impressionable college freshman tacking the Stigmata lyrics to my dorm room door and subsequently offending numerous neighbors. They didn't like my PUSSY GALORE poster, either.

Heard "Stigmata" playing in a liquor store yesterday, which was nice.

COMPLETELY OTM.

Hahahaha.....I remember scrawling the lyrics to "Stigmata" with a red crayon (redrum-stylee) all over the walls of the front hall in the house I lived in off-campus my senior year of college. Ah, youth.

I'm surprised Big Black hasn't come up in relation to "Stigmata." When I first listened to it a few days ago (I'm a newbie! Burnt this off a friend) that's the first comparison that came to mind.

If I had to guess, I'd suggest that Albini probably thinks Jourgensen is a lightweight (despite both being from Chicago).

(Miccio, I just mentioned Big Black posts before yours, then again, maybe you came in a big huge xpost)

-- The Ghost of Dan Perry (djperr...), July 12th, 2005.

otm! those are my favorites too.

Yes it does. I have to give the whole album a fresh listen because in the past I'd always be disappointed that nothing else matched "Stigmata"..

If I had to guess, I'd suggest that Albini probably thinks Jourgensen is a lightweight (despite both being from Chicago).

Pretty much. I know there is some Albini fanzine rant where he calls Ministry unlistenable and so on, maybe in the same piece where the Pixies are called blandly entertaining college rock. It used to be on some site dedicated to Big Black, but I can't find it now. Prob Albini had massive hate for anything remotely catchy or danceable.

Things changed (IMHO for the better) when Nine Inch Nails arrived.. more clearly, when everyone knew Trent was here to stay for a while. Eventually, Trent hired Albini to record some drum sounds for The Fragile.

http://www.gourmandizer.com/ezine/albini/
http://www.theavclub.com/feature/index.php?issue=3622&f=1
http://www.vacant.org.uk/interviews/albini.html
http://www.dailycardinal.com/media/paper439/news/2003/04/03/Arts/Steve.Albini.Dissects.His.Music-408532.shtml
http://www.citizinemag.com/music/music-0506_stevealbini1.htm

he's still opinionated and rockist as hell, he just doesn't seem quite as vitriolic.

http://www.dangpow.com/~landed/bigblack/mrrint.htm

http://www.chunklet.com/back_issue_15_4.cfm

ok, i think i've posted enough albini stuff on a ministry thread.

There are "similarities" between my mother and Jeffrey Dahmer. Genetically, for example, they are more than 99 percent identical.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Presumably he was asked to produce "Violator"?

loved this record so much i went to 'laser ministry' at a planetarium while i was in college. that experience was as bad as you may have guessed.

Were you blind at the end of it?

Anyway, wow, this is one of those records from my teen years that I haven't listened to in years. I'm not sure it would hold up, now I don't feel the same kind of anger. But man, it sure was great back then.

Before I bought the record, I had a dream about the song Stigmata. I described the dream (and the song) to a friend and he said "Oh, you should get the new Ministry album". It was indeed the same music.

At your service!

No, though I was wishing I was blind about halfway through.

yes this rekkid rules

Stigmata never stops ripping my face off, every single time

you've run out of lies you've run out of lies you've run out of lies
liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiies

this album is all about "You Know What You Are" and "Flashback" IMO

(well, the title track too)

Yeah, side 2 is a total blast.

can I just say lol @ me for not realizing until JUST NOW that the sample on "The Land of Rape and Honey" was Hitler

NOW HOLD UP MAN

xpost -- what the hell, DJP! How could you miss that!

I never saw the video and I avoided watching archival Nazi footage; I just assumed it was incoherent English screaming.

lol I used to play this a lot around my parents, too

"Seed? Yay!"

it was more like "EEE? YAH!"

The track "Stigmata" is featured in Richard Stanley's 1990 science fiction thriller Hardware, although the band shown apparently performing the track is actually Gwar.

huh

really love the live video, cant remember which dvd, theyre in a building that looks like a church

ugh, vague much?

liked this record when it came out. always heard it as recontextualized big black, but not slavishly so. ideal listening environment: late at night, on headphones, on acid, while wandering alone through the all-white & harshly lit underground tunnels connecting the arts and sciences buildings. scary. can't imagine listening to it now.

not-exactly ideal listening enviroment: the car. Got my first speeding ticket listening to Stigmata in the car. oops.

At least you weren't playing 1000 Homo DJs "Hey Asshole" right afterward.

haha yeah...or Cop Killa lol