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Source Material: Ministry 'Psalm 69' playlist. What Figures on a Beach were to Detroit, what Book of Love were to Philly, what Information Society were (a few years later) to Minneapolis, Ministry were to Chicago -- at first, anyway. (Say, starting around 1983 or so.) That is to say, a rather fey and effete American Anglophile answer to synthesized early-MTV-era British haircut pop.
But then, everything changed. In 1986, Ministry hooked up with British dub genius Adrian Sherwood for an album called Twitch -- sort of a missing link to where they wound up, but also a sonic outlier in their catalog and maybe the most rhythmic thing they ever did. Then, two years later, with barbarian-come-lately mastermind Al Jourgensen seemingly inspired by certain big and black swine-fornicating post-hardcore outfits from the onetime Hog Butcher of the World, Ministry found both their metal and mettle.
The Land of Rape and Honey, from 1988, and 1989's more or less interchangeable The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste charted higher in the U.S. than Twitch (Nos. 164 and 163 compared to 194, respectively), if not as high as 1983's wimpy With Sympathy (No. 96), but unlike that debut, those records both eventually went gold. The real breakthrough, though -- for Ministry and for "industrial metal" in general -- was 1992's Psalm 69, aka KEΦAΛΞΘ (boy, that was fun to type!), which peaked at No. 27 on the Billboard 200. It sold a million copies (a first and last for the band) on the shoulders of two Top 20 alt-rock radio hits, the novelty-ish "Jesus Built My Hotrod" (featuring Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes) and the protest-ish "N.W.O." (ostensibly a blast at Bush the Elder). Ministry never really had another hit after that, unless 1995's middling dance-charter "The Fall" counts.
They also never made another particularly memorable album. In fact, there's a sense in which Psalm 69 itself reduced their mechanistic shock tactics and noise terrorism and pissed-off perversion, devoid of meaning in the first place, to over-considered self-parody. But this record did manage to open a door that kinder and gentler disciples like Nine Inch Nails (starting with Broken, two months later) and Marilyn Manson -- not to mention, uh, Stabbing Westward and Gravity Kills and Static X -- could sashay right through. So, while Psalm 69 didn't come close to inventing industrial metal (even for Ministry themselves), it was instrumental in popularizing the form. As for where this record got its own ideas, read on.
Aleister Crowley1910-1914 Black Magic Recordings
Scary and/or preposterous early-20th-century Brit occult dude Crowley has obviously had a hold over metal music forever: just ask Ozzy or Jimmy Page. (Recent years have even begat a whole new wave of black magick bands like Ghost and Blood Ceremony.) In Ministry's case, the number in Psalm 69's title (not to mention its likewise orally fixated subtitle, The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs) is said to be a reference to the 69th chapter of the so-called Great Beast's circa-1912/1913 tome The Book of Lies. According to the undoubtedly trustworthy Cleopatra Records, the intonations collected on this 2007 album come straight from dusty, ancient wax cylinders Crowley recorded. So be careful!
Metal UrbainAnarchy in Paris!
Besides putting out Rough Trade's first-ever single in January 1978 ("Paris Maquis"/"Cle De Contact"), this French 1976-'79 foursome were, simply, the seminal super-abrasive electronica punks, cited for years by Steve Albini as a major inspiration on Big Black -- which means Ministry owe them even if Al Jourgensen never heard them. To quote this 2004 compilation's liner notes by Jacques Amsellem, "They had two big '60s punk guitars in the front, no bass player, a vocalist who sang/sloganeered in French, a pre-techno drum machine, extremely well-written shock lyrics and wacky little terrorist pamphlets, and a synthesizer commanding the whole damn thing for total sonic assault." Industrial enough?
Killing JokeWhat's This For ...!
Post-punk Brit doomsday nihilists Killing Joke got the bright idea, beginning in 1979, that Black Sabbath and disco and dub reggae really weren't all that far apart, and the rest is history. Their hypno-clatter was just plain way ahead of the game. People tend to cite their excellent 1980 debut as Ground Zero in the machine-metal game, but this possibly even more grooving 1981 follow-up deserves some love, too -- the "My Sharona" opening of "Tension" and all. Somber Revelations, released in 1982, was another good one. Beyond that, meh -- but they'd already done what they had to do.
Test Dept.Beating a Retreat
When industrial music started, it was really industrial -- and also really metal, in the sense that it involved a lot of banging on metal objects. Who needs twerpy synthesizers when you've got radiators, automobile parts, power tools, and ginormous gongs and oil drums, right? London's Test Dept., whom nobody much talks about anymore, were right up there with Germany's Einstürzende Neubauten as far as wreaking shop-class havoc goes -- and maybe even, somehow, more primal and less art-gallery about it. Later they got a little bit daintier, collaborating with striking miners' choirs and inching toward techno, but on this 1984 album -- initially released as two 12-inch EPs -- they get percussive like a whole damn factory.
WisebloodDirtdish
Two bands whose slime-infested shtick braved the same depths of demolition-derby din and depravity as Ministry long before Ministry did were New York's Swans (most horrific in their early 1982-1985 slowed-down hate-glop guise, before Jarboe joined and they started letting stark melodies and frozen dance beats in) and Foetus (namely Australian jerk-of-all-trades Jim Thirlwell, who also answered to Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel, You've Got Foetus on Your Breath, etc.). In 1985, Swiss ex-Swans drummer Roli Mosimann and Thirlwell formed a sensationalist duo known as Wiseblood. Their two most invigorating tracks were 12-inch singles: "Motorslug" (inspired by hot rods) and "Stumbo" (inspired by dinosaurs). Both are here, along with 1987's original six-track Dirtdish LP and more: "The Fudge Punch," "Death Rape 2000," you get the idea.
Butthole SurfersLocust Abortion Technician
Like their own probable influences Pere Ubu, Public Image Ltd. and Flipper (all of whom deserve to be name-dropped here somewhere), San Antonio scatologists the Buttholes peaked early -- if not on the two overlapping-setlist EPs they put out in 1983 and 1984 (now joined on Brown Reason to Live/Live PCPPEP), then certainly on 1985's Psychic ... Powerless ... Another Man's Sac. After that, they started sneaking away from the Tex-Mex punk 'n' roll that gave their early music so much oomph, and slid increasingly into a noodly brown-acidic performance-art haze. In other words, they mostly abandoned songs for mere sound. But by this 1987 release, they were still coming up with songs as dementedly catchy as "Human Cannonball," not to mention blatantly stealing Sabbath riffs in "Sweat Loaf." Of course, both the compelling and tedious parts inspired Ministry, which is undoubtedly one reason Gibby was hired to guest on Psalm 69. And four years after that, in 1996, the Buttholes wound up having their own real-life pop hit, with "Pepper," an honest-to-Satan song (which sounded kinda like Aerosmith's 1993 hit "Livin' on the Edge"!) of all things.
VoivodKilling Technology
Fascinated by inventions that destroy (see the album title), Quebec nuke-rockers Voivod figured out a way to make thrash-metal guitars feel as scienterrific as electronic instruments, and in the process wound up becoming some reciprocal backdoor equivalent of industrial, not to mention the most consistently interesting metal band of the last few decades. After two early albums that basically bordered on Cro-Magnon punk rock, 1987's Killing Technology had them stretching out song lengths into a dense new dystopian species of hyperspace-age prog: "Computers controlling your functions/ Seems like we got electronic alienation/ Trading children for a new kind of robot/ Waiting for the old people to disappear." There's real emotion conveyed here and no gross-out garbage, ironic or otherwise. But in terms of sheer sound, no metal band anticipated Ministry more.
KMFDMNaïve
Germans, for reasons of history and temperament, have always had something of an edge when it comes to industrial music -- in some ways, Kraftwerk figured out the machine thing before anybody else, after all. In '80s Chicago, America's premier industrial label, Wax Trax, embraced electronik body muzik by Sprocket-y Central Europeans with goofy accents as well as Ministry, not to mention body-fluid-flaunting Jourgensen side projects like Revolting Cocks and 1000 Homo DJs. Alleged Depeche Mode haters KMFDM had probably the least rigid and emaciated sound on the label. And this 1987 album was their best, stacking fluid Mantronix electrobeats, physically fit Led Zeppelin licks, and dirty dub-reggae grooves under Eurodisco frauleins, opera divas and Aryan men achtung-ing like Arnold Schwarzenegger, presumably without shirts on.
Age of Chance1,000 Years of Trouble
More Brits who wound up falling through history's cracks, these purportedly political pranksters started out as a sort of beatnik post-punk band in the Leeds tradition of The Mekons and Gang of Four. Then in 1986 they decided to cover Prince's "Kiss," which got them on the U.K. charts and maybe gave Art of Noise the idea to revive the ditty with Tom Jones a couple years later. They followed that up with their Crush Collision EP, most of which (though not "Kiss") is now affixed to the end of this 1987 full-length. Their sound was a volume-pumping, theoretically danceable collage barrage that wishful thinkers went so far as to compare to Public Enemy, who debuted around the same time. Age of Chance called it "sonic metal disco," and gave their agit-prop album covers pretentious liner notations about "thundering industrial complexes" and "power-noise generators" and "abstract fury" and "taut Urban Heartlands of the Northern Hemisphere." They also covered the Trammps' "Disco Inferno" -- stiffly, but still.
Rigor MortisRigor Mortis
This Texas thrash troupe actually managed to put out their self-titled 1988 debut on Capitol; the track "Foaming at the Mouth" showed up on the Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years soundtrack the same year. But nobody bought the album, and they wound up being sent down to the minors -- first Metal Blade, then Triple X -- for the other couple records they made before imploding. Their halfway-to-death-metal uglification, though, is said to have been a catalyst for introducing extreme metal to the Lone Star State -- which, given that Pantera still looked like glam girlie-men in 1988, probably means Rigor Mortis had an effect on those hell cowboys. Anyway, the Ministry connection is a direct one: guitarist Mike Scaccia wound up touring with the band in 1989 and recording with them on Psalm 69, heavying their aesthetic accordingly.
Treponem PalTreponem Pal
French-fried and cement-mixed cybergunkers named after a syphilis-emitting micro-organism, produced by Franz Treichler of Swiss samplers-doing-guitars'-work trio The Young Gods here and Roli Mossiman of Swans/Wiseblood infamy on the album that came after. Yeah, you could bet the house they were on Al Jourgensen's radar at the time, and not just because guitarist Michael Bassin wound up playing with Ministry during Lollapalooza in 1992. On this 1989 debut they're crazed, twisted and intense, harrumphing in guttural bistro tongues and grinding appliances together as they chronicle a "Soft Mouth Vagina" and argue that a nuclear war would solve overpopulation. But they also manage to come off like a flesh-and-blood rock band -- a pretty neat trick. Sadly, it wasn't until later that they opted to cover famous Kraftwerk and Lipps, Inc. tunes.
William S. BurroughsDead City Radio
Long after Steely Dan and Soft Machine took their names from his beatnik books, Ministry collaborated with the Naked Lunch-bucketer on Psalm 69's "Just One Fix," even appearing in the video. And on the CD single (yes, "CD singles" were a thing back then), he talked in an alternate version and created the cover art, being knowledgeable in the ways of junkies and all. Perhaps Jourgensen and Paul Barker (did I mention him? He was Ministry's other official member at the time, handling "bass/programming/vox") were upset that they didn't get to be on Burroughs' religion-obsessed 1990 Dead City Radio disc, which featured folks like John Cale, Donald Fagen, Allen Ginsberg, Blondie's Chris Stein and Sonic Youth instead.