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Ministry
Rio Grande Blood

13th Planet Records

Posted: Sunday, June 04, 2006
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

To answer the obvious question first: no, Ministry still hasn't made an album that lives up to 1992's Psalm 69. What Rio Grande Blood is, however, is more focused. Psalm 69 had its political moments, of course, like "N.W.O.," but it had its moments of random amusement, too. Rio Grande Blood dispenses with all that; Al Jourgensen doesn't bother to get sidetracked, and there is no equivalent here to "Jesus Built My Hotrod." It's all straight-up political vitriol, aimed squarely at the Bush administration. "Señor Peligro" in particular has a nice fist-pumping protest chant, delivered in Ministry's classic distorted shout and accompanied by choppy thrash guitars, and its hard to resist the staccato verses of "Lies Lies Lies," even if you don't quite buy its conspiracy theory premise. For all the leftist spleen-venting though, Jourgensen hasn't lost his sense of humor. The drill sergeant monologue on "Gangreen" is classic (sample line: "I'm gonna stick my dick in your nose!"), and while it's become a cliché to manipulate sampled Bush speeches (after all, the man is a wealth of inane material), no one else manages to do it with such panache, and title track "Rio Grande Blood" manages to capture that perfect petulant tone on manufactured lines like "I'm a brutal dictator!" and "I want crude oil!" The most effective protest song, though, is the sobering "Khyber Pass," featuring wordless vocals from guest singer Liz Constantine of Dizzy X, who adds a sense of Mediterranean atmosphere to Jourgensen's refrains of "Where's Bin Laden? Some say he's hidin' at the Khyber Pass/Others say he's at the Bushes' ranch!" This isn't as groundbreaking as Ministry's work in the late '80s, and Jourgensen's gradual progression away from industrial and into more guitar-oriented metal will probably continue to disappoint old school fans, but all things considered, this is a sharp and focused assault on U.S. politics that stands up admirably alongside such classics as Psalm 69 and The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste.