New album: Ministry, AmeriKKKant

Al Jourgensen, Ministry

Ministry's AmeriKKKant was released like the mother-of-all-bombs onto an unsuspecting world just a week ago. I had to battle with corporate America to obtain my digital copy--turntable isn't installed in new home yet--and I had to take this on a beach-walk too, on this cloudy, rainy, bitterly-grey-windy day on England's east coast, totally in-synch with this album, heavy waves thumping the shore.

AmeriKKKant is an album for listening to very, very loud. A genius mix of sound-bites, deep bass and insistent drums, industrial orchestration: repetitive like the drums of war, this is AmeriKKKa.

If the name of the album doesn't give it away, the artwork on the vinyl will; the back is Lady Liberty, middle finger raised, striding away from her pedestal, not a backward glance; a grey land of smoky destruction and searchlights behind her.

Al Jourgensen, Ministry

Don't expect to come away from a listening feeling all goody-goody, self-righteous and justified in belief. It's like being thrown into a huge washing machine full of dirty water and pebbles, being accosted by presidential stupidity, racist mantras, war-proud sentiment, white-supremecist hatred; filthy mud that needs to sink to the bottom and stay there. Instead, we have to ask, how did we let it come to this, AmeriKKKa? (Or anywhere else, for that matter, anywhere else.)

I came to the church of Ministry very late: a full convert, I am very happy to have been able to photograph and experience them at both Houston Open Air and Chicago Open Air in recent years (click there to see more photos).  Those of you in Sacramento, don't forget: Ministry will be at the Ace of Spades on Monday, 26th March and as of now, there are a few tickets left.  (I won't be there, because I've done my own version of that Lady Liberty thing for exactly the reasons embodied in this album, and am now on the other side of the Atlantic, middle finger raised.)

More info on how to obtain your own copy of AmeriKKKant, tour dates and more, here on Ministry\s website. Sheer genius.