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Ministry
The Last Sucker

13th Planet Records

Posted: Friday, February 01, 2008
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

For the past decade or so, Ministry has pretty much stuck to a formula, releasing a new album every couple of years, each one rooted in industrial metal but exploring it in a slightly different context each time around, from the bluesy sludge of 1996's Filth Pig to the sample-driven thrash of Rio Grande Blood a decade later. As project founder Al Jourgensen bids farewell to the band, he also takes a look back, and The Last Sucker doesn't so much stick to a single aesthetic as revisit everything Ministry's done for the past few decades. "Let's Go" opens the album with a burst of adrenaline-fueled industrial metal that very much recalls the band's classic "N.W.O." Similarly fast and heavy, and employing more than a little of Jourgensen's signature political humor, is "The Dick Song," which takes aim at the U.S. vice president's bloodthirsty reputation with a refrain of "Run, run, run / Cheney's got a gun," while "Death and Destruction" repurposes manipulated samples of George W. Bush's infamous "decider" speech and sets them to rapid-fire industrial thrash. Title track "The Last Sucker" is more on the straightforward rock 'n' roll end of the spectrum with blues chords and staccato drum rolls, and the brilliantly brutal "No Glory" transitions from heavy, stop-and-start guitar riffs to hard-chugging metal. The real surprises don't show up until near the end. There's a cover of The Doors' "Roadhouse Blues" that ably expresses the original's nihilistic excess. There's an honest-to-god punk song, "Die in a Crash," featuring expressive keyboards and guest vocals from Fear Factory's Burton C. Bell. Then there's the epic two-part "End of Days," the album's final, final song and a fitting funeral dirge for both Ministry and, one surmises, the American republic. Beginning with some hard-rocking but fairly standard Ministry-style industrial metal, the song then gives way to a slow brooding groove, with Bell returning to deliver prophetic spoken word over an eerie children's choir that proclaims the titular "end of days." The track ends with gloomy, bombastic guitars backing President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address, a warning against the dangers of an overly influential military-industrial complex that seems timely and eerily prescient today. As an ending to both an album and a musical career, it strikes an unexpectedly serious note, driving home the point that beneath Ministry's often ribald humor lies a serious concern with the state of the U.S. government. The Last Sucker is good head-banging fun, to be sure, but more potent is the reminder that there's a lot more nuance to Ministry's political expression than unfocused punk rock rage and anti-Republican catchphrases.