With “End of Days (Pt.2)” there was a sense of finality as Ministry played out their 2007 album, The Last Sucker, including a lengthy sample of Dwight Eisenhower‘s farewell address on his presidential tenure, an eerily prophetic warning about the dangers of military-industrial complexes. The thrashy industrial metal George W Bush-themed trio of albums saw Ministry revitalized after a few uneven LPs and they struck a delicate balance between on-the-nose political messaging and the tongue-in-cheek humor that has been the band’s bread and butter since early on. That end was not meant to be as five years later, Relapse landed as yet another uninspired one-off and set the tone for the band going forward. Fast forward 12 years and Ministry have put out five albums after their supposed death, digging deeper and deeper into the shit. Before Relapse you were always in on the joke, but now, Ministry are content to be the joke instead. This transition has to do with the death of guitarist Mike Scaccia, part of the songwriting backbone from Houses of the Molé up until his death after Relapse was released. Apart from AmeriKKKant, which missed the mark by relying too much on atmosphere, Ministry in the 10’s have erred on the more simple side of industrial metal, with the flow and intensity of the Bush-trilogy fading into distant memory. HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES instead follows the path Moral Hygiene started down in distilling the Ministry sound into something more rock/pop oriented, with an overly polished and safe sound.
While Moral Hygiene was a low point in Ministry‘s discography with some truly uninspired songwriting, HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES manages to come out on top despite featuring some of the band’s most on-the-nose lyrics to the point of self-parody. This is because it manages to do what its predecessor failed at: it’s catchy. “Goddamn White Trash” is a good example as it has a solid groove and chorus build that sticks in the mind. In fact, the early material on this album moves in the same kind of bass led lane as early albums like ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ (Psalm 69), and while it does so it can be a solid listen. There is more variety in the guitar playing than the last few albums and this can make songs like “TV Song 1/6 Edition” and “New Religion” stand out a bit with their thrash influence. However, the defining aspect of the album, unfortunately, lies in its generic quality. Ministry are at the point of repeating themselves ad nauseum. Nothing here sounds like an original idea and while the material is catchy it also sounds hollow. HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES is not as uninteresting as its predecessor, but it sounds like a bunch of political slogans to the backing track of some safe metal. There hasn’t been a reason to listen to new Ministry albums in 10 years and I can no longer find a trace of art in this husk of a band. Looking for some good industrial in 2024? Try Death Killer. Satire? How about you listen to Cancer Christ or Arthouse Fatso instead, as they are way more effective at parsing contemporary politics.
