Ministry is an Industrial Thrash band who have been around for a while, having originally formed in 1981. The band has been through innumerable lineup changes, but it has never stopped revolving around vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Al Jourgensen, who just turned 65 in October. As this is a band that has largely escaped my attention to-date, I’ve been digging into sampling some of their older work to try and understand how Hopiumforthemasses, their 16th LP, fits into their stylistic evolution.
It’s not a step I always take when reviewing a new-to-me act, but the music on this album had me asking questions about why it is what it is – particularly: are the vocal bytes a strategy being employed to make recording easier on the aging Jourgensen?
Surprisingly, no. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
Ministry started as a New Wave and Synth Pop band on their debut album in 1983; their sophomore saw them evolve into a more EDM stance, but they didn’t really find their sound until 1988’s The Land of Rape and Honey. At the point, the core of their sound became this solid, chuggy, thrashy guitar bound in layers of Industrialized production.1 The bass and percussion lines work to support the structure of Ministry’s songs, but the vocals are highly non-standard. Jourgensen doesn’t use harsh vox, but he does screech the occasional line and distort most of them in some way, shape, or form.
All of this carries over to Hopiumforthemasses, with the clarification that more lines are spoken. Many feel like programmed bytes being dropped in with distortions already applied; and I’m just talking about Jourgensen’s lines, because there are a lot of soudbytes utilized, because another tendency I’m noticing with Ministry’s music is that it is aggressively political (as if the album titles haven’t given it away). Yet, Hopiumforthemasses doesn’t just stop with aggressively stating a political ideology – it actively mocks America’s right wing. I mean, check the song titles:
And none of the songs on the album even try to form a coherent argument or statement about why the right wing should be mocked. Jourgensen and Ministry seem to begin with the presumption that attempting to enter into a good-faith discourse is pointless because the opposition is too stupid and/or malevolent for debate to be a viable approach. This is especially evident on “Aryan Embarrassment”, which includes lines like:
“The Jews will not replace us/Nazis replace us instead”
“Plagues of militantly stupid”
“Ain’t proud of you boys at all”
“Alt-right, alt-Reich”
“Do unto others what we know is wrong (stupid, it’s stupid)”
On one hand, I wish the band made a concerted effort to present or illustrate this stance in a more polished format – maybe even something clever. On the other – they aren’t wrong. You can’t debate with a Nazi, because entering a debate in good faith involves acknowledging that your opposition might be right and you might be wrong. Taking that mindset when facing extremist ideologues who would embrace or excuse genocide makes you complicit in the genocide which follows. Decrying facism, as this album does, doesn’t need to be a complicated statement.
As a result, Hopiumforthemasses serves as a call-to-arms in an election year in a nation which has begun to feel like an armory overloaded with black powder and just waiting for a spark. This is why, musically, there aren’t many tracks with tracks which have sections you can sing along to - the more prominent approach seems to be chants or sound bytes. Lyrically, this sentiment is most strongly reflected in “It’s Not Pretty”, with the lines:
“This is a war on you and me And it’s not pretty, it’s not pretty This is a wake up call before it crumbles and falls This is a war on our very existence There must be resistance to the tyranny of stupidity And it’s never easy and it’s never pretty”
Ultimately, the album broadly states that the only hope for our society is likely through a (probably violent) suppression of this rise in right-wing authoritarianism. That’s the titular “Hopium”. That’s what Ministry offers; basically, ‘be ready to fight’.
Shifting back to reviewing the actual music present, the album is a great blend of Thrash and Industrial Metal. All of the songs are solid jams, with the instruments carrying a ton of weight and constructing a solid foundation for all of the vocal and thematic elements to rest on. It feels simple, but it works, and there isn’t a song on the album that I don’t actively enjoy listening to, even when a couple of them get repetitive with certain phrases.
My least favorite track is probably closer “Ricky’s Hand”, which is a cover of an old Fad Gadget song about the dangers of drunk driving. The Thrash elements are gone in this cover, which makes it feel like something is missing. Also, the repetition of the title starts to cross into irritation by the end.
Overall, Hopiumforthemasses is a fairly straightforward affair: Jam out and punch Nazis.
Rating: Teal
I didn’t sample anything beyond their fifth album (1992’s ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ – or “Psalm 92”, as it’s commonly called), so any interim changes or one-offs won’t be included here.