Ministry was one of the most underrated synthy bands...the songs were on Depeche Mode level or even better and still great...I am listening With Sympathy always in my car up and down and remember the good old days in the 80th, wow !
I can’t be the only one who preferred Ministry before they became just another metal band……. Don’t get me wrong,. I love metal too, but Ministry was a better dark pop/aggro group than metal imo.
I agree he most certainly doesn't look like he's Miserable or isn't having any Fun doing his New Wave/Synth Songs from " With Sympathy." Why doesn't he just admit that he liked it and be done with it. I also loved his earlier stuff compared to the Industrial stuff he now does.
I have no idea why he is so embarrassed about this time in his life. He made great music and evolved. He should feel good about it. Wouldn’t be where you are now without your unique past
I think it's possible that the embarrassment is sort of like the opposite of what a lot of us "alternative weirdos" went through where we might have started out as running with the crowd and being into these sort of "macho" and toxically masculine metal bands when we were young and then we open our minds and start to veer off into the underground and find bands like The Cure (which was a lot of people's gateway band in the 80s) and we eschew the sort of boneheaded metal thing and were therefore bullied and shunned by the metalheads in school. He did the opposite. He left the sort of "fey" synthpop scene behind to become massively aggressive and metal and so he's possibly emotionally bullying himself, or his "old" self, in a way. I guess that's one way to psychoanalyze it.
Metallica put out Ride the Lightning in 1984, so this wasn't considered heavy even for the time, but it doesn't take away from the music still being good. I get a very New Order vibe from this.
Ministry has gone through so many eras: -New wave -EBM/Industrial -Industrial metal -Thrash Metal -And whatever the new stuff is And every era has at least a few highlights. I checked out after Barker quit, for the most part, but The Last Sucker wasn’t bad.
I've always wondered who was the one that broke that dude's heart to go from this to full on industrial speed metal. It's probably one of the craziest transitions I've seen within the music industry, but I've got no doubts there's way more to this than uncle Al is telling us... Who broke your heart brotha? Change just doesn't happen overnight like that especially in this case.
Ministry had a creative take on New Wave music. As they evolved to more of an industrial sound they hit peak creativity around the mid to late '90s. Then they started to become more and more metal and had a more derivative sound that is perhaps less creative than their original new wave stuff. Industrial is like new waves ugly cousin using pretty much a lot of the same instrument and style only with less friendly hooks. Metal is basically variations of distilled amped up electric guitar music. I just realized. I wrote the late '90s instead of the late '80s lol. They are most creative in the '80s where has the time gone?
According to stories that were told back then, The record company pressured him into making a synthpop album due to the Thompson Twins’ popularity at that time. But Al always wanted to make “hard music” so that eventually led to the transition to industrial then to metal although I don’t see them as a metal band.
I know thus since Ministry has of course become I should say an evolved into an industrial and even perhaps a straightforward metal band at times but nonetheless they deserve all the fame and notoriety they have! Because I have never seen or heard a pop band this tight before! Listen to them not even not a pause, no lag time needed. Just one, two, three, four - and BAM! Right on the beat of the next song! It sounded like it wasn't two separate songs at all, just continual single song... Dude, that is a tight set! That kinda flow you usually only see with rock bands that are all living together in one same room in total discomfort and they end up thriving on the Sunset Strip good show and don't show Uncle Al this because he hates this era of his career and he'll probably have this flagged and taken down just everybody shush but yes tight set!
After Twitch, they weren’t even the same band. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Stigmata and Thieves, but after the two harder records.. I lost interest. It got downright speed metal. Blech. My favorite stuff will always be With Sympathy, to Twitch.
Hey LOSER and troll, He's not a junkie anymore . He's also going to rerelease this early stuff, I guess he ISN'T embarrassed. Go find something else to hate on dude. 🖕
