Industrial-metal greats Ministry celebrate new album at the Warfield in San Francisco
A powerhouse bill of three influential bands takes over the Warfield Tuesday as industrial giants Ministry bring their current tour with electronic pioneers Gary Numan and Front Line Assembly to SF.
Frontman and Ministry mastermind Al Jourgensen may have scored his first hit with the band's dark synth-pop dance anthem "I'm Falling" for the independentWax Trax Records imprint in 1981, but the Chicago-based group did not stick with its initial commercially successful formula for long. Despite showing a knack for catchy tunes that led to a deal with Arista Records -- along with subsequent hits featured on Ministry's debut With Sympathy and success the band had supporting the Police -- Jourgensen felt this vision had been watered down by the label. He parted ways with Arista, returning to Wax Trax to release a number of darker 12" singles that showed the growing influence of electro-industrial dance acts like Front 242 and Cabaret Voltaire.
By the time the band signed a new deal with Sire Records and released Twitch in 1986, the influence of hardcore punk on Jourgensen as well as primary collaborator Paul Barker had nudged the group's sound in a heavier direction with faster, more aggressive drum programming and audio samples. By the time Ministry issued The Land of Rape and Honey two years later, the band's transformation into pioneering industrial titans was complete.
That album, along with the progressively more metallic follow-up efforts The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste and Psalm 69 -- and the band's over-the-top stage show with a volatile line-up of industrial all-stars including powerhouse dueling drummers Bill Reiflin and Martin Atkins (formerly of Public Image Ltd. and Killing Joke), Skinny Puppy's Nivek Ogre and Revolting Cocks mainstay Chris Connelly -- broke the band to a wider audience despite (or possibly because of) the subversive nature of the music. Jourgensen also cultivated an ever-growing number of side projects, including the aforementioned Revolting Cocks (started in 1984 with Front 242's Richard 23 and Belgian musician Luc Van Acker), industrial punk bands Pailhead (with Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi) and Lard (with Jello Biafra) and 1000 Homo DJs with Nine Inch Nail's Trent Reznor.
The band would be invited to play the second edition of the Lollapalooza Tour in 1992 alongside the headlining Red Hot Chili Peppers and then rising Seattle bands Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, exposing even more young minds to Jourgensen's twisted vision. The group would see a decline in its fortunes and popularity as the decade wore on and Jorgensen struggled with addiction, eventually putting his substance-abuse problems behind him. Ministry would emerge with renewed fury in the 2000s as Jorgensen took inspiration from the second Iraq War and the presidency of George W. Bush to fuel some of the most venomous and political songs of his career.
While the singer announced the band would end after the death of longtime guitarist Mike Scaccia in 2012 (a year after Ministry had reformed following a "farewell" tour and earlier "retirement"), the band has remained an indelible force on the industrial-metal scene with the Trump presidency inspiring another round of politically-charged anthems from Jourgensen. Ministry originally announced their "Industrial Strength Tour" in early 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic brought live music to a grinding halt. The band finally brought the rescheduled retrospective tour focusing on the brutal, industrial/metal tunes from The Land of Rape and Honey, The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste and Psalm 69 to the Warfield in 2022 with support from the Melvins and Corrosion of Conformity.
Jourgensen and the current line-up of the band featuring keyboard player John Bechdel (Killing Joke, Fear Factory, Prong) guitarists Monte Pittman and Cesar Soto, monster drummer Roy Mayorga and former Tool bassist Paul D'Amour have remained busy ever since, recording new material and embarking on a round of live dates with Gary Numan and Front Line Assembly last spring and supporting Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper on an amphitheater tour last summer. Ministry is set to release its 16th studio album entitled Hopiumforthemasses next week on Nuclear Blast Records that features contributions from Eugene Hutz (Gogol Bordello), longtime collaborator and Bay Area punk pioneer Jello Biafra and Corrosion of Conformity guitarist Pepper Keenan. To promote the effort, the band kicks off its latest tour at the Warfield Tuesday night, once again joined by Numan and Front Line Assembly.
One of the pioneering figures in synth-powered rock in the late '70s, British musician Numan exerted an enormous influence on new wave, electro-pop, and industrial music with his icy, futuristic keyboard-driven sound. While his original band Tubeway Army offered an edgy mix of distorted guitars and pulsing synthesizers indebted to punk precursors the Sex Pistols and the Damned on its 1978 debut, Numan would embrace electronics on the group's breakthrough album, Replicas.
Exploring a loose concept revolving around androids (referred to as "machmen" in Numan's dystopian vision) on the songs "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Down in the Park," the 1979 album echoed science fiction author Phillip K. Dick's important novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and predated Ridley Scott's landmark film version of the story Bladerunner by three years. Numan subsequent solo effort The Pleasure Principle released only six months later further distanced the artist from his earlier sound, ditching the guitar for synths altogether and offering up the massive international hit "Cars."
While huge sales and lavish live spectacles maintained Numan's stardom in the UK well into the '80s, later forays into electro-funk and dance wouldn't find the same international success. After years adrift, Numan reinvented himself in the '90s by delving into the grinding guitars and heavier beats of industrial music while lyrically focusing on more personal themes starting with 1994's Sacrifice.
Since then, Numan has enjoyed a career renaissance. His influence has been celebrated by disciples like the Foo Fighters, Prince and Trent Reznor, and his classic songs have been sampled by the likes of J. Dilla, GZA, Basement Jaxx, and Armand Van Helden. Though some tours would look back at his rich history and celebrate his landmark past efforts, Numan has continued to create new material. On his current tour, Numan is mixing his early hit tracks with songs from his latest industrial-rock concept album Intruder.
Continuing to explore the post-apocalyptic themes of 2017's climate-change focused effort Savage (Songs from a Broken World), Intruder from 2021 looks at a near-future earth where humans are struggling to survive on a desert world from the perspective of the planet itself. Like its predecessor, the album sonically explores the blending of Eastern and Western cultures to great effect. Opening act Front Line Assembly was founded by Bill Lieb (aka Wilhelm Schroeder) in 1986 after he split from Canadian electro-industrial giants Skinny Puppy.
Partnering with synth player/producer Rhys Fulber, Lieb explored a style heavily indebted to the electronic body music of Front 242 and UK electronic pioneers Cabaret Voltaire that established a template that Reznor would bring into the mainstream with Nine Inch Nails in the following decade. Front Line Assembly would introduce corrosive guitars to the mix in the '90s as industrial metal became more popular, scoring a hit with their 1994 album Millennium. The group would also expand its fanbase with song contributions to video game soundtracks (notably Quake 3) and more recently producing full soundtracks for games. While Fulber has spent time away from the project, he returned to FLA in 2016.
Ministry with Gary Numan and Front Line Assembly
Tuesday, Feb. 27, 6 p.m. $49.95-$85
The Warfield
