ALBUM REVIEW: Moral Hygeine – Ministry

Industrial behemoths MINISTRY return with their latest album Moral Hygiene, the band’s 15th album and a follow up to 2018’s AmeriKKKant. That album, as the title suggests, saw MINISTRY take aim at the political situation in the USA (something they had previous form with throughout their career, culminating in the Bush trilogy of albums) and the current state the world is in. Moral Hygiene spews forth with the same kind of venom.

Moral Hygiene sees MINISTRY debut a new line-up for this recording. It features new bassist and former TOOL man Paul D’Amour on his first MINISTRY record, alongside of course the inimitable Al Jourgensen, keyboard player John Bechdel, guitarist Cesar Soto and drummer Roy Mayorga. Uncle Al and his band of not so merry men are focused from the opening beats of first track Alert Level right through to the Trump-baiting closing madness of TV Song #6 (Right Around The Corner Mix), with its ten songs making for another journey into Jourgensen‘s unhinged madness and off the wall but focused social commentary.

The album mixes full on industrial thrash as finely demonstrated on Disinformation with more slower groove and ideas aplenty on tracks like the discordant We Shall Resist and the sarcastic COVID-19 referencing of Death Toll. It results in the album being the most varied collection of songs that MINISTRY have done in a long while.

A cover of THE STOOGES‘ Search And Destroy (featuring guest guitarist Billy Morrison) is given the MINISTRY treatment, and their take on this classic works extremely well. There are a few other choice special guests on the record as well. A tantalising Lard reunion with Jello Biafra on Sabotage Is Sex is arguably the icing on the cake, while Alert Level features original NWA member and electro legend Arabian Prince. In both cases, the guests enhance the tracks they feature on. All told, it makes for an enjoyable listen that contains everything you would want from a MINISTRY record, and the fact that they are still producing records of this calibre after the long and storied history the band have had is a heartwarming thing indeed.

Moral Hygiene cements the fact that MINISTRY have found a niche as some sort of industrial version of bands like MOTÖRHEAD and SLAYER in that their straight ahead no-nonsense attitude is always dependable and their music is so reliable, even though sometimes you have to expect the unexpected. When it comes to always delivering that pounding industrial vehemence and biting social commentary, no one does it like MINISTRY and they deliver this in spades on this record. Long may it continue.

Rating: 8/10

Moral Hygiene is set for release on October 1st via Nuclear Blast Records.

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