Ministry - AmeriKKKant

I haven’t been paying much attention to Ministry since the release of Relapseand that horribly goofy “99 Percenters” song, but I had happened to get an early taste of Ministry’s new album here when Al released the “Antifa” single back in 2017. I mean with a title like that I couldn’t not tune in to see what Al was going to do to try to seem edgy and in with the current far-left ideologues, and it did not disappoint. Just like he hopped on the Occupy bandwagon with “99 Percenters”, the recycled industrial beats of and laughable lyrics saying that they’re not snowflakes of “Antifa” are uncle Al trying to be cool now by endorsing the overzealous and violent militia group that clearly glorifies and romanticizes violent social revolution in an unhealthy way. Like “99 Percenters”, that song is doing jack shit for the movement, just capitalizing on its relevance these days in hopes of reviving Al’s and Ministry’s shock-value relevance, ironic but not surprising at all.

With the release of the track list and the super duper edgy album title, I knew I was going to have to have some popcorn ready to hear Al get all fussy about the 2016 election and huff and puff about Trump, maybe play a drinking game with all the overused bumper sticker talking points he’d quote and not expand on at all.

I don’t always agree with Al. In fact, I often see him as a kind of cultural leech that uses his and others’ outrage over political issues as an advertisement to sell his ideologically cheap music (to fuel his heroin fix back in the day). But I can’t deny that Ministry was a huge force in industrial music and industrial metal in their prime, and Al’s disillusionment or anger has spawned songs and albums I enjoy quite a bit. Even though I knew the lyrics were going to be pretty surface-y and that uncle Al was going to spout a lot of basic riled-up bullshit everyone’s already heard, I was hoping that at least his dissatisfaction with the current presidential administration would be passionately translated into pummeling beats and fiery instrumental and vocal anger. Even on that front, I was so incredibly disappointed, I think this is Ministry’s worst album to date.

While Al, the promotion, and the aesthetic of the album framed it as some big protest album full of corny revolutionary energy, what actually shows up is the most bloated, most unimaginative, and the tamest Ministry album yet.

Right from the start, the opening track, “I Know Words”, has to be the most unnecessary and unnecessarily long album intro I’ve heard and can recall from recent memory. It’s literally just slowed down soundbites of Trump stating his quite-well-known campaign slogan and his other well-known quotes, sometimes chopped and screwed with a bunch of turntable scratches thrown in between to make him say “I know stupid words”. You sure gottim there Al. That was some witty utilization of samples there. That sure was a powerful first punch at the guy you’re trying to take down with your album, bud. Not only is this a terrible start to the album, but it’s a foreshadowing of what’s to come, it doesn’t get better.

The rest of what follows on the album drags on like an unenthusiastic kid throwing together your shitty sandwich at Subway in that Al’s almost literally one-note vocals (sung in the same drunken protestor rasp in every spot across the whole album) and the slow, overdrawn, half-assed industrial compositions across the whole thing make every moment feel like the band doesn’t want to be there just as much as I don’t want to be getting a sandwich at Subway or listening to this boring Ministry album.

The two songs that immediately follow the opener, “Twilight Zone” and “Victims of a Clown”, eight minutes a piece, carry on with the simple use of more Trump soundbites, over industrial marches with hardly any character at all, eventually so lifeless after five minutes of not changing at all. “Twilight Zone” makes particularly annoying repeated use of an obnoxious harmonica motif, and in both songs, Al hardly has any time on the microphone, and when he’s there he’s moaning pretty thoughtless first-draft lyrics. The latter song starts with a decent buzzing guitar riff that sounds like it could have built into something cool, and the bass line under is kind of funky, but it ultimately sputters out as the collage of samples leads into three more lazy verses from Al delivered almost exactly the same as the previous song’s (only kind of redeemed by Burton C. Bell’s gruff vocals over the thrashy conclusion). Both seem like they need to end multiple times and they just go on and on to the point where it almost qualifies as drone because none of the songs seem like they’re going anywhere. And on neither of them does Al say anything poignant or even that inflammatory about Trump.

This becomes the overwhelming characteristic of the album, oversaturated with uncreative use of samples, songs stretched out way too long with industrial metal found by the scraping of the bottom of Ministry’s creative barrel, and it’s not even that edgy. Everything about this album screams being made out of some non-artistic necessity, to fulfill a contract or get Al on tour again to make some show money and merch money, I don’t know or care. It’s so dead I have no capacity to even care when I’m thinking of it.

“Wargasm” makes use of a pretty unoriginal, primitive guitar buzz throughout the whole track, more samples of course, and lyrics analogizing the practice of war to sexual exploits. Al clearly wanted it to be disgusting and make listeners feel disgusted about America’s practicing of war, but it comes off so tacky and tactless, all the disgust just stays on Al.

I already talked about how laughable the song “Antifa” is, but I feel like I can’t ignore the blatant encouraging of violence by Al on the basis of the people against Antifa’s principles being “assholes”. In his fist verse he says, “I’ve got something to say, I’ll back it up with my fist.” And while the song is still an opportunistic attempt at relevance by way of saying that “Antifa’s the shit”, what Al is advocating is mindless and unwarranted violence and support of a violent group with misplaced priorities and a dangerously unhealthy desire to be part of some revolution, but only reveling in the brute violence of it. I understand the merit of violent revolution, but Antifa is just advocating violence; what they’re doing is not revolutionary at all.

The only breath of fresh air on the whole album is the very Fear Factory-esque “We’re Tired of It” for its furious speed and Burton C. Bell’s much more animated performance, and it’s not even three minutes. It’s shorter than the stupid intro track. It wouldn’t make it onto a Fear Factory album though, and it definitely looks a lot better considering the songs it’s surrounded by are some high-stinking garbage.

You don’t have to be on the “opposite end” of the “political spectrum” as Al, or find his ideologies dumb to be upset with the poor effort he puts forth on AmeriKKKant (a title so cringe-worthy I’ve found myself mimicking the album cover while typing it); in fact this project is much more insulting to the people its marketed toward than it even is to Trump in how lazy and transparently exploitive it is and how it thinks those people are so stupid it can just rehash some talking points and soundbites and get a quick buck from them for it. Even with the low expectations I had going into this album, it managed to undershoot them still, so boring it’s practically telling me itself to listen to something else. I had said that I predicted that shitty Black Veil Brides album to be the worst of 2018, but I think now it has some competition. Fuck, this album is so lame. I’m truly at a loss for words at this point. Ministry has been struggling lately but this new low is something I didn’t think was fathomable, and now it’s reality. For any other band this might be demoralizing in the short term, but a loud enough wake up call to light a fire under their ass and come back better to prove their value in the music sphere. Ministry though, sound as though they’ve resigned themselves to mediocrity and aren’t even upset that they can’t even reach that. I never thought I’d hear Ministry so fucking washed up that they couldn’t even make a convincing anti-Trump album. Then again, this is who Al has always been, he’ll talk shit and say something to try to come off as radical, revolutionary, and controversial, but for all his talk, he’s shown himself lately to be one lazy motherfucker who says what he thinks will get him coverage and sales, and puts minimal effort into the work.