House of Blues
March 29, 2024
Fourth (or fifth) time’s a charm. Legendary purveyors of industrial filth Ministry were first scheduled to play Houston back in the summer of 2020, and you can probably guess what happened. Later dates were also postponed due to COVID (or related travel restrictions). Along the way, the band was going to be joined by — depending on which iteration of the tour: KMFDM, Corrosion of Conformity, Melvins, and Filter.
Our agonizing wait paid off last night, when Ministry finally took the stage following Front Line Assembly and ex-Tuebway Army frontman Gary Numan.
My first live experience with Jourgensen and company was at Lollapalooza ’92. I’d gone on a beer run during the end of Ice Cube’s set, and Ministry started while I was walking back to our lawn seats. As I crested the ridge, the bowl of Walnut Creek Amphitheatre looked like a scene from another world.
That stage was festooned with bones, and the sun was setting, casting an eerie glow over the roiling crowd. I felt like one of those naive investigators in an H.P. Lovecraft story who stumbles upon an ancient and profane ceremony they can barely comprehend.
Alas, the House of Blues can’t quite compete with that, not that it should have to. The stage setting may be a little less overt, but what hasn’t changed is Jourgensen’s barely tethered rage and desire to provoke the powers that be.
But before Ministry took the stage, you had Front Line Assembly (yours truly didn’t make it in time) and Gary Numan. Numan regularly shows up on “one-hit wonders” lists thanks to the ubiquity of 1979’s “Cars,” but that assessment ignores the subsequent 20 albums he’s released, especially the industrial ones that have marked his last decades of output.
In other words, “Cars” got the phones out, but the bulk of Numan’s set was much more aggro and haunted, making for a performance that, from the looks of it, definitely caught the uninitiated in the audience by surprise. And that’s before considering Numan’s band, who look like somewhat de-S&M’ed Cenobites.
Ministry’s been kicking around in various incarnations since the early ’80s. The current group includes Jourgensen, keyboardist John Bechdel, drummer Ron Mayorga, and guitarist Cesar Soto, who bears an uncanny resemblance (at least to this guy watching from the back) to the late, great Dimebag Darrell.
But it’s still Jourgensen’s baby. Last night’s set opened with four songs from the band’s latest release, Hopiumforthemasses. “B.D.E.” (if you don’t know what that refers to, ask your grandkids) led into “Just Stop Oil.” Anti-fash song “Goddamn White Trash” followed, accompanied by the departure of what appeared to be a handful of skinheads.
What a shame.
Despite having an album CV to rival Numan’s, Ministry limited the set list to five of their releases. And it makes a certain amount of sense once you appreciate the pace Jourgensen establishes. Counterintuitively (for a band with 16 albums to its name), Ministry’s time on stage was brief, with Jourgensen’s banter mostly limited to “This next song is …”
In spite of the catalog (and even if you omit anything from With Sympathy, which they probably wouldn’t mind), Uncle Al often seems like he can’t be arsed (if I may use a fake English accent). By turns snarling the lines from “Alert Level” (“Let’s get ready to die:” more of a command than a request) or excoriating the pit for not knowing the proper response to “Broken System,” Jourgensen knows what the audience expects.
And he delivers. “N.W.O.” and “Just one Fix” brought the crowd to its peak, carried along by such Ministry classics as “Sitgmata” and “Jesus Built My Hotrod.” The latter is kind of a goofy outlier in a set busting at the seams with songs about political and religious hypocrisy, but it’s also one of their biggest hits.
Jourgensen’s demeanor lightened a bit at the back end of the set, when he commended the audience for getting the right call and response for “Thieves” (“That’s how you fucking do it, Houston!). Unlike that Lollapalooza show, he was relaxed. Don’t get me wrong; he’s still angry enough to howl at the structures of power and oppression, but considerate enough to let a bunch of aging goths get home before the Madonna show down the road ended.
Personal Bias: An ex of mine put “Work for Love” on a mix tape she made for me in college. The relationship didn’t last much past that.
The Crowd: Huge. A woman walked up to me during Numan’s set and said, “This place is so crowded! I can’t find my friends.”
Me: “Were they wearing black?
Her: “Yes, how did you…oh ha ha!”
Overheard In The Crowd: “You saw Linkin Park live?”
“Sure, I grew up in Seattle.”
Random Notebook Dump: “Goths age better than other musicians. Must be all the vampirism.”
SET LIST
B.D.E.
Just Stop Oil
Goddamn White Trash
New Religion
Alert Level
Broken System
N.W.O.
Just One Fix
The Missing
Deity
Stigmata
Thieves
Jesus Built My Hotrod
ENCORE
Burning Inside
So What
Pete Vonder Haar
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