Ministry, O2 Institute, Birmingham review – a different 4th July from Uncle Al

There can’t be many bands who have been around (on and off) for almost 40 years and who choose to play the whole of their latest album as their live set. That kind of thing is more often reserved for 10- or 20-year anniversary tours. No one could accuse Al Jourgensen and Ministry (or any of his many bands, for that matter) from having ever taken the easy route at any point in their career though.

To celebrate this year’s Four^th of July, Ministry played two sets on the Birmingham leg of their first UK tour since getting back together last year – the first consisting of the whole of 2018’s AmeriKKKant album, the second taking in the high points of their monumental late 80s and early 90s trio of industrial-metal genre-creating discs, The Land of Rape and Honey, The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste and Psalm 69. Given that AmeriKKKant is Ministry’s anti-love letter to President Tiny Hands and that it is still a soundtrack to the daily news, over a year since its release, this was a move that proved somewhat popular with their Midlands’ audience.

As “I Know Words”, the sample-heavy intro to Ministry’s latest disc drew to a close, with trippy Trumpian-America themed visuals projected onto the back of the stage, Al Jourgensen strode out into the light, looking like a heavily-tattooed demon king with flailing dreadlocks and more piercings than you might want to count. Given his history of self-destructive habits, however, he was looking pretty healthy and ploughed into “Twilight Zone” with a mean blues harmonica. This was accompanied by riffing guitars and pounding drums, while images of Bruce Lee, mushroom clouds and the present US President flashed across the stage. Moving on through the Charlie Chaplin-sampling, ”Victims of a Clown”, “Antifa” and “Game Over”, Jourgensen briefly introduced final track, “AmeriKKKa” with “We don’t want you on the same path to destruction as us. Fuck Nigel Farage” to enough cheering to know that this part of the rock’n’roll nation are no Little Englanders.

After a short breather, Ministry returned to the stage with Uncle Al announcing, “We’ll celebrate the 4^th July by playing some old tunes from when days were crappy but not shitty.” With that, the band plunged into the feisty “The Missing” with its thumping beat and Jourgensen’s magnificent growl. Soon they were into the speedy “Jesus Built My Hotrod” and, by now, the mosh pit was getting decidedly lively. During “Just One Fix”, William Burroughs appeared on the screen in all his spectral glory and gallons of dry ice enveloped the stage, as pogoing, headbanging and crowd-surfing seemed to take a fair number in the audience into a kind of ecstatic state. However, bringing things to a close with the more atmospheric, if not particularly chilled “No Devotion”, Al handed out calming spliffs to the front row as he sent the crowd on its way, intoning “The voice of God means nothing anymore.”

Over some two hours, Ministry had provided an evening of religion, politics, drugs and a celebration of humanity and, on this Four^th of July, Birmingham lapped it up.

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