Messed!Up
Can a pioneering industrial metal band, releasing the best albums between 1986 and 1992, still be relevant in 2025? A band that made me more than disappointed last time I watched them live at a festival in Sweden back in 2003? Yes, yes, and frecking yes!
Growing up on synthpop and punk music in my young years, I came across Ministry’s debut album With Sympathy in 1984, a year after its release, when the local record store man told me, ‘If you like Depeche Mode, you should listen to this’, and I bought a copy of the album. Little did I know that pretty boy Jourgensen – he was a handsome man on those synthpop promo photos – would turn into an industrial metal monster and release pioneering albums that influenced bands like Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein. With his second to his fifth album, Al Jourgensen established Ministry as the innovator of industrial metal, and with classic songs as ‘Thieves’, Just One Fix’, ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’, and ‘Stigmata’, he became a legend in the scene – and has been nominated for six Grammys.
Today, 41 years after I discovered Ministry for the first time, the band finally swung by Hamburg, and I just felt that I had to get one last Ministry experience, even if I was disappointed after the last show I attended 22 years ago. Sometimes you have to let go, right?
Now, for the first time ever I already knew the setlist. My friend is a SetlistFM addict, and ‘kindly’ told me what songs they were going to play. Usually, I hate it because I want the surprise, but in this case, I was super happy because the setlist had all of my favorite songs on it – I was in for a treat!
Ministry walked onto the stage just after nine, and people started shouting as soon as Al Jourgensen raised his arms and started, ‘Thieves, thieves and liars, murderers. Hypocrites and bastards’. “Thieves” is the reason I became a fan 1989 and, later the same year, started listening to Nine Inch Nails because – as the local record store man told me – ‘they sound like Ministry’. And from there it was down memory lane. “The Missing” and “Deity” from the 1989 album The Land of Rape and Honey followed “Rio Grande Blood” which sent out a tsunami of brutal riffs. Do you know how you know a show is good when the audience’s average age is well over 50? When men who probably have tripled their BMI since their first Ministry show in 80s start to undress and engage in what probably was a moshpit, but due to the slow nature of the movemen,t we’re not sure how to classify it – but it was amazing to watch.
Jourgensen seemed so relaxed and even, at times, joyful while he belted out the lyrics like he was 25. Wow, the man is slightly younger than my mother (I have a young mom), but pulls off a performance that would make twenty-year-olds green with envy. I love how he mimes to the samples in most songs while firing up the crowd and making the moshpit slightly, slightly faster (I’m still not sure what to call but who am I to make fun of people when I was standing a bit away, and a bit scared). Even the newer songs, the only two on the set (“Goddamn White Trash” and “Alert Level”) sound amazing, although I’ve barely listened to the latest albums. And then the real peak of the night arrives.
After an amazing version “Stigmata”, there’s a three-song run, starting with “N.W.O” and continuing with the epic and the best song they’ve done, “Just One Fix”, and ending with “Jesus Built My Hotrod”. I didn’t really know how to handle it and just went nuts, probably pulled a muscle in my worn-out back, but thought ‘It’s now or never, I will never see anything like this again’. I was done after these songs and didn’t need more. But there was an encore left, in two parts. First, they played some classics off their first two albums, the debut album With Sympathy and the second album Twitch, and the ten-year-old who bought these records in the 80s got a deja vu feeling, reminding him about the day he went to the record store in Gothenburg. However, as I said, I was done. It didn’t matter that they played songs I always wanted to hear live but never thought they would play again – “We Believe”, “Effigy (I’m Not An)”, and “Revenge” – I’ve had enough of hits.
Until this point, it had been a furious show, heavy guitar-driven, and when the synthpop songs finally arrived, my brain couldn’t transition to another genre. The last song played was “So What” off my favorite album, The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste, but I started walking towards the merchandise corner to buy Ministry merch – got a nice t-shirt and a new favorite cap.
Having seen Ministry a couple of times over the years, this show was a massive revelation, and I’m just hoping there’s a slight chance to see Jourgensen & co once more because this was the Ministry I’d always wanted to see but never thought I would and, now, never will again.
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Photographer: Martin Wilson
