Ministry - Rio Grande Blood

My expectations for the penultimate Ministry album were not high even with the addition of Paul Raven (Killing Joke) on Bass, and Tommy Victor (Prong, Danzig) on Lead Guitar. After hearing a couple of leaks on the internet all it was just Thrash Metal with Samples of everyone's favorite neo-imperialist tyrant Gerorge W Bush. The addition of Slipnots drummer Joey Jordison made me worry about the company Al Jourgensen was keeping Slipnot are only a ...
...google or the Wikipedia to find out what it is about) treats us to some Killing Jokeesque drumming and more variation in Guitar texture.

For any other industrial rock band this would be the album of their career but for Ministry it is decidedly average.
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My expectations for the penultimate Ministry album were not high even with the addition of Paul Raven (Killing Joke) on Bass, and Tommy Victor (Prong, Danzig) on Lead Guitar. After hearing a couple of leaks on the internet all it was just Thrash Metal with Samples of everyone's favorite neo-imperialist tyrant Gerorge W Bush. The addition of Slipnots drummer Joey Jordison made me worry about the company Al Jourgensen was keeping Slipnot are only a pop band in my opinion.

What are we offered on this album that is actually new? Not much really there is their trademark guitar sound, which is achieved by recording tons of guitars on top of each other. The sound this achieves is impressive a total metallic wall of sound, this combined with simple repetitive riffs played as fast as humanly possible adds to the impressive wall of sound. The problem here is that there is little change to the musical palette here, which is a bit disappointing considering the variety of noise that they have produced in their 25 odd year history. The drumming is intense with plenty of double bass drum work, but for me it is a case of been there, heard that done it, got the T shirt or am I just Jaded.

There are some redeeming features and for me there are when Paul Raven takes the helm on his bass, like on "Lies, Lies, Lies" his repetitive subsonic pounding grabs you by the short and curlies, drags you down an alleyway and does some pretty unpleasant things to you. The song also treats us to some Killing Jokeesque guitar textures. Likewise Yellow Cake (Look up Yellow Cake on google or the Wikipedia to find out what it is about) treats us to some Killing Jokeesque drumming and more variation in Guitar texture.

For any other industrial rock band this would be the album of their career but for Ministry it is decidedly average.
 

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