Ministry ‘Moral Hygiene’ Review: Al Jourgensen and co. expertly target our dystopian present while offering sonic catharsis on new album.

How concerned are you? That’s the sampled repeated question on Alert Level, the ominous churning opener to Moral Hygiene, the latest album from Ministry (October 1st, Nuclear Blast). Over seismic beats and scalding power chords, frontman/mastermind Al Jourgensen laments the sad truth about our present situation: There’s no one to blame, but ourselves.

Ministry has always been at their best when the United States is at its worst, and this album acts like a catch-all for all our current collective ills, be it the fallout from the Trump presidency and the pandemic, racial unrest, or just the sad lack of basic decorum.

The end result is the group’s most focused effort since their mid 00’s anti-George W Bush trilogy (Houses of the Mole, Rio Grande Blood, and The Last Sucker), while also building on the strengths of their experimental 2018 release Amerikkant, but with more accessible ties to their industrial past.

Good Trouble is a slamming tribute to the late Civil Rights icon John Lewis – featuring samples of protest marches, Lewis and chants of “fuck the police” (with some ethereal harmonica ala the underappreciated Filth Pig thrown in for good measure).

The song is a mix of whiplash metal and eerie, liquid arpeggios, with Jourgensen’s lyrics perfectly reflecting how soul sapping things have become: Are you deflated/are you depressed? But never about to get up, he adds: get agitated and clean up this mess!

Sabotage is Sex is classic Psalm 69 era Ministry, with fellow Lard-mate Jello Biafra joining the proceedings, with a full metal rant against police brutality (I can’t breathe…its open season on the oppressed!) It’s a theatrical tour de force and one of the most instantly infectious songs on the album.

While Moral Hygiene has the boilerplate industrial metal stomp that’s typified Ministry albums since the late 80’s, it also adds elements that freshen things up, including the Middle Eastern tinged Broken System, or Believe Me, where Jourgensen brings back the faux-British vocals he employed during his early 80’s Everyday is Halloween days, peppered with strummed acoustic guitar and string-laden synths over which he rails against the Republican Party for becoming a fucking death cult who never listens!

He repeats this understated vocal style on the sonic collage We Shall Resist, while Death Toll let’s the samples do the talking about the politization of the pandemic. It’s hypnotic pace and ethereal quality recalls Broken Dawn off their groundbreaking 1988 release The Land of Rape and Honey.

Disinformation is another killer track, with a knotted, jackhammer riff that ranks among their best, providing a pulsing soundscape for a screed against the endless onslaught of fake news.

The odd man out on the album is Search and Destroy, where they tackle the classic Iggy and The Stooges anthem. But the track, which features additional guitar from Billy Morrison (Billy Idol, The Cult, Ozzy Osborne) takes the songs original breakneck pace and slows it to a crawl.

While the approach is novel, it takes the energy of the album down a notch, and is peculiar given most Ministry cover tracks are usually lightning fast renditions of the source material. In the end it would make for a better B-side than a single, as it doesn’t fully represent the album.

Moral Hygiene closes with TV Song (Right Around The Corner) a sequel to the TV Song II off Psalm 69 (which was in turn a sequel to TV Song off the Jesus Is My Hotrod single). Starting with a surf rock riff before going into a full-bore sonic assault, over which Jourgensen wails its time to get our fucking lives back! amidst cleverly edited soundbites: I’m Donald J Trump…the American virus…the enemy of the people…a threat. Consider it a cautionary warning in case Trump runs again in 2024.

In the press release for the album, Jourgensen states I never thought Ministry would be in the position of preaching traditional values, but this is the rebellion now.

And while it may seem strange that a band that used to terrify Middle America are trying to restore our moral fiber, it’s also comforting. Few bands do protest anthems anymore, and none do them with the mix of gallows humor and bluntness of Ministry.

In this modern day shitshow, it helps to have a soundtrack, and Moral Hygiene is a pretty damn good one.