Although I haven't heard their latest release, judging from their 1996 release, Filth Pig, they're falling into the cliches of heavy modern rock. Gone are the insistent guitar riffs, frenetic tribal drum lines, and clever samples. Instead we have a rather dull and cliched album that shows a little promise of the band's experimentation, but more often shows their boredom with the project and each other.

Filth Pig comes after Ministry's smash album Psalm 69 went platinum. They were huge and Jourgensen was a heroin addict. During the recording of Filth Pig, he was famously busted for possession at a party (later released, though). This album is one of the few times that I'm prompted to tell a musician that it might be time to lay off the drugs.

Where earlier albums had plenty of snap and urgency, Filth Pig is dull, dirge-like grindcore. I wonder if Paul Barker had much to do with this album - most noticeably absent are his scattered and driven drum beats that usually formed the under-appreciated heart of their best songs. Instead, there seems to be a thick layer of the musical equivalent of steel wool over every song. I can't make them out enough to really dig on them.

The Good

The song on this album that perhaps comes closest to the best of Ministry's previous work is track 7, "The Game Show." It starts with a rousing staccato guitar/drum coordination that gradually builds with a growling second guitar and a background saxophone. Eventually, in crashes the main theme (overture, if you'll allow me the blasphemy) and the song rises to a crescendo, to drop back into the staccato guitar. My interest is caught here, naturally, but we have come to the point where the song could return to the mediocrity that dominates the rest of the album. But they pull it off, with some nice drumming from Barker and surprisingly clear vocals from Jourgensen. It's a bright spot that reminds us what they can do when they are on point.

"Reload," the opener and one of the more interesting chugga-chugga songs on the album shows where they might have been going with all of this. It combines some interesting whirring guitars with well-timed rests and some vintage industrial samples. Too bad it's only two and a half minutes long.

The Bad

The song that most accurately reflects what went wrong here is the titular song at track 2. God, is it dull. Super-fuzzed guitars and vocals lazily plod their way through this seven minute monstrosity. It's not overly terrible, just plodding and dull. The guitars hang there listlessly, a white noise that obscures all else. There is a bright spot here though - there's a nice occasional distorted harmonica that shows that Ministry can still innovate even when they are stagnating.

Track 4, "Crumbs," is not only another generic grindcore tune, but hesitant and strident. You can almost feel their boredom with the band here. Al Jourgensen is thinking about the next Lard EP and Paul Barker is wondering who he can get to appear on the next Pigface album. And the song slogs on, over and over, please somebody hit the skip button, I'm getting a migraine.

But the most spectacular implosions, as with most Ministry albums, come at the tail end at the album. Sure, Grandpa Al has a lot of influences, but that's what side projects are for (a la Buck Satan and the 666 Shooters, Al's country band). Does this album really need a chirpy industrial-pop version of Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay?" It may be included as a goof (a la RevCo's "D'Ya Think I'm Sexy?"), but it comes off boring and out of place. It ain't grindcore, to be sure, but no one decided to tell the guy at the mix board. The distortion settings are the same, Al's vocals are just as indecipherable, and Barker's drumming is just as listless.

As for the closing song, "Brick Windows," well, anyone remember when Ministry was a new order clone? Me neither. I wanted to keep it that way, but this song reminds us how far they've come by showing us a peek at where they've been. It sounds a bit too much like the third runner up at a battle of the bands using all the nifty new pedals they got for Christmas.

The Ugly

The rest of the tracks are the sort of stultifying sludge rock that bands tend to devolve into when they get bored. They remind me of Alice in Chains' final studio LP, which had the same sort of shoulder shrugging disinterest in its own material. There's no catch, no drive, not even a hook in many of these songs, which is sad. Ministry was all about drive, and to see them slouch toward Babylon like this is disappointing. Maybe they've managed to figure out where they were going with this with Dark Side of the Spoon.

The Conclusion

Filth Pig feels like a step in the wrong musical direction for Ministry, whose members have been a central focal point in the American industrial scene. With so much creativity and innovation behind them, an album that wallows in its own unoriginal crapulence is a disappointment, to say the least. Hopefully, this will be a low water mark in their careers that they can shrug off and move on.



Recommended: No