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(reviewed by Philip Maddox)
Ministry is known far and wide as one of the forefathers of the entire industrial genre. Throughout the years, they have released several supposedly groundbreaking, excellent releases, none of which I've heard. Then 1996 rolled along, and they released Filth Pig, which turned a lot of fans off. Truthfully, this album doesn't sound very industrial at all. It's loud and heavy, to be sure, but that doesn't mean it's industrial. This is the band's attempt at stripping back their sound to the base elements and just sort of pounding along. Does it work? The answer is "sorta".
Actually, the album starts off very well. "Reload" is a short, convincing, fast paced number with a cool riff and interesting structure. After that, the interesting structures start to sort of float away and the album just becomes sort of sludgey. The songs are all really long (5 minutes or so on average) and are typically based on one riff, played over and over VERY slowly. Therefore, as you can imagine, those riffs better be pretty damned awesome. And hey, a couple of them are. "Lava" has an awesome, repetitive groove, with some harmonica thrown in to boot. "Crumbs", despite borderline retarded lyrics ("This plate of refried shit is covered in crumbs!"…. uh, yeah), has an AWESOME riff, the best one on the album. Awesome structure, too. Heavy as hell. And "Dead Guy" has one hell of a riff as well. Powerful and slow, but it pulls you in.
Strangely, though, that track also represents the album's main flaw. You see, that awesome riff changes a little halfway through to a really boring riff, and that pounds away forever and ever. That happens to most of these songs, actually. They just pound on and on. And if the riff changes to a lame one (like on "Dead Guy") or wasn't very good in the first place (like "Useless", a very appropriate name), you're screwed. The album gives you no variety or relief. The only tunes that pick up the pace at all are the cover of "Lay Lady Lay" (which is more funny than good, but still entertaining) and the kinda upbeat sounding album closer (which I can't remember for the life of me, though). Ah well. It's worth picking up cheap for the handful of good moments (and there are some good moments here), but all in all, this album just ends up sounding boring. Maybe other Ministry albums are better, but this one just leaves me cold. Pass.
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