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Cinemetal, Show Reviews

MINISTRY LIVE: BORRRRR-ING

 Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 12:05pm by

Vince and I saw Ministry’s (alleged) farewell tour last night, which is to say, we went to see Meshuggah (who ruled – Vince’ll have a review up a little later I think), and then we decided to stick around for Ministry, who just happened to be the headliners.

There were two distinct crowds at this show, and after Meshuggah concluded their set, suddenly all the long haired dudes with big beards split and the venue was suddenly overflowing with what we might call, for lack of a better term, hipsters, yuppies, and good old fashioned bridge n’ tunnel trash. Ministry took an unbearably long amount of time to set up, mostly, I think, because they perform from behind a chain-link fence that had to be installed (Is Al Jourgensen saying we’re all prisoners of the band, or that the band are prisoners of us all? HE’S SO DEEP!!!). Then the lights dimmed and some intro music started and I thought “Oh, swell. The band is finally gonna come out and play some music now.”

Then the intro music kept going.

And going.

And going.

Seriously, this intro was so long that it’s still happening right now. I’m still standing here, typing this review as the intro music plays, waiting for the band to come out. “Wow,” a friend of ours jokes, “live they sound exactly the same as they do on the CD!” Yes, they’ve decided to go ahead and just play an entire song from the CD over the PA system for their “intro.” And it’s not a short song, either. Another friend wonders aloud why they’ve kept the crowd waiting for so long if they’re not even on stage for the first fifteen hours of their show.

Oh-kay! The band has finally gone on now. They open with “Let’s Go” from The Last Sucker, and suddenly I’m reminded why I never really like Ministry that much: for each song, they find a cool riff, and then just play it over and over and over and over again. Sometimes they find a second cool riff and then play that for too long as a kind of bridge between bouts of playing the original cool riff. Even stoned or drunk, this shit can get real old, real fast. Add to that the fact that Jourgensen, as a performer, strives to be very, um, theatrical, which I usually dig, but, really, he’s not that good at being theatrical. He just kind of comes off like the David Cross character on Arrested Development.

Above, I’ve posted Ministry’s video for “Just One Fix.” It’s a song I generally like, and when I was a young man, I found the video, with its weird William S. Burroughs cameo and kid endless puking, to be genuinely disturbing. It’s how I’d like to remember Ministry – not the way we (allegedly) said “farewell” to them last night.

-AR

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  • Fink

    I would pay any amount of money to see Tobias Funke fronting a metal band live.

  • Cisco

    Too bad, Ministry is actually one of my favorite groups.

  • ricemine

    yeah im gonna have to agree. went to see Meshuggah as well but had a spot in my heart for Ministry from Psalm69 and rape and Honey days but they played all of maybe 3 old songs and ended with that brutal (not like S.O.D. brutal either) cover of a Stones tune! wtf was that about?

    i thought they def rocked out on some tunes but all in all it seemed that the theatrics took priority over the music. its when well rehearsed becomes phony. Al didnt even seem like he was doing alot, pausing for a smoke while samples of him played!

    and why was a farewell show/tour all new songs cept the encore!?

  • http://www.metalinjection.net RobInjection

    You forgot to mention the seizure-inducing strobe lights. Seriously, Ive never been hat annoyed by a band’s lighting.

  • http://hookssobig.blogspot.com Wayne

    Well, this has decided it for me, I’m not going to this show when it comes to Chicago next week. I was going to go for Meshuggah, but now I think I’ll just wait for them to either headline or play with someone who doesn’t suck live. Thanks for the warning!

  • Pingback: MESHUGGAH LIVE: AWWWWWESOME! | MetalSucks

  • Joe A.

    I was actually late to the show in Philly and only got to see Meshuggah play two songs. Takes a damn hour to get into the city.

    Anyway… Ministry was both great and terrible. I’d never seen them live before and I’d for quite a while wanted to. Since this is the “good-bye” tour I thought I had to go. I have to say I do like the new material, but not to the point where the whole of the main set was just the last three albums…. so only ministry from like the past 5 years. Then why the hell end with two covers. Ending a show with a cover when you’re already a great band with great songs is an immediate joy kill.

    I did enjoy the first encore where they played 4 old songs: So What, NWO, Just One Fix and Thieves. Still…. why the hell for this goodbye tour crap are they only playing 4 of the old songs. The show had been hyped up to hell and they played four classic songs! Fuck Al. I love what he did and even his new stuff, but you don’t do this kind of shit. Plus he’s no Miles Davis or Robert Fripp.

  • http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESEX:IT&item=290226262906&_trksid=p3984.cSELL.m315.lVI dudemandude

    thanks for the heads up riceman. i thought because this was the “last tour” they would play a greatest hits set, not an “all the songs al wrote after rehab without paul” set.

    i saw ministry a few albums back when paul was still in the band (maybe anthrax opened?) and they played evrything i wanted to hear and did it well. paul didnt try to act tough or evil, he just played the songs proper, even though al did the “im so evil and every lyric i say (lipsync) is blowing your mind” thing.

    i next saw them a few years after (with RevCo opening, and after paul left) and it was a total crap fest. “old stuff” meant one track off of psalm 69. all in all 3 songs i wanted to hear after 70 minutes of strobelights and riffs repeated ad nauseum. after that i kept my ticket stub taped to my bedroom mirror to remind myself NEVER to see ministry again. the band i knew and loved and who i considered nearly legendary was not the one who now existed.

    but “last tour ever” and I started to remember the good times. luckily the high ticket price drove me away and i avoided the boring heroin-nod paul barkerless ministry.

    -sorry for the super long post.

  • http://plabebob.blogspot.com/ Plabebob

    wow gutted, i was gunna see them when they come over to the uk. Now I’m not sure whether to go just cause it’s ministry & I’ve never seen them before, maybe hear a couple of good songs if nothing else, or just give in & not bother…dammit!

  • http://noyokono.blogspot.com noyokono

    Farewell tour my ass. Uncle Al is gonna pull an Ozzy quicker than Ozzy did.

    I passed on these shows because (1) Irving Plaza sucks a bear testicle, and (2) ticket prices were too high for a gig that I knew would be packed with new material that nobody likes.

    Call me when Ministry does a “Don’t Look Back” show for ‘Psalm 69′.

  • http://www.kflyfm.com Carl

    I saw them in Portland, OR with the same sentiment…I NEEDED TO SEE MESHUGGAH. They OWNED. The fact that they actually played Bleed, and pulled it off flawlessly…That alone was worth the 2 hour drive, the idiot goths with tacklbox faces and the overall sense of suicidal teen rage. I stuck it out to see Ministry so I can tell my grandkids I was there. It was like a goth prom complete with black balloons above us waiting to drop. Wow. Really moving. Brought a tear to my eye. I left after I realize I would have to wait about 5 hours to hear NWO, really the only Ministry worth a fuck. Al was drunk on red wine and didnt care anymore. And the crowd looked like a Tim Burton fallout. I felt out of place because I don’t wear a trench coat and black and white striped stockings. Hopefully Meshuggah will do a full scale US tour where they double their stage time and they won’t have to put up with Ministry shitting all over their Glory.

  • jaime estobar

    ministry should’ve packed it in ages ago (before they became a metal band and certainly after barker left). this show could be $8 and i still wouldn’t have gone, esp. with that overrated swedish band on the bill.
    i wonder how many air guitaring clowns with goatees were spinning their heads for that shitty bands’s set…

  • Stevie

    The author is a Meshuggah fan. That’s says it all…. credibility….zero!

  • Stevie

    The author is a Meshuggah fan. That’s says it all…. credibility….zero!