History Music / Ministry

** "Fairly Unbalanced" towards Creator/FoxNews, and "The Horror" towards a number of Republicans (particularly Todd Akin) who made extremely horrifying statements about rape in the 2012 elections.

** The "Jesus Built My Hotrod" single pointedly lists the radio edit of the title track as the [[LongTitle "Short, Pusillanimous, So-They-Can-Fit-More-Commercials-On-The-Radio Edit"]].

* SeriesFauxnale: ''The Last Sucker''.

Ministry finally had its main breakthrough with ''Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs''. Besides providing the best example of their balls-out HotBlooded IndustrialMetal sound and the triple guitar attack of Jourgensen, Mike Scaccia and Louis Svitek, it showed the band's sense of humour through the CrazyIsCool hit single "Jesus Built My Hotrod" (with nonsense vocals by Gibby Haynes of the Music/ButtholeSurfers) and provided arguably one of the first {{Stupid Statement Dance Mix}}es with "N.W.O." ''Psalm 69'' gained them a mainstream audience and would prove to be their most critically acclaimed and commercially successful album.

* StupidStatementDanceMix: "N.W.O." can be considered one, but a more direct example would be "Fairly Unbalanced" and "The Horror." The former samples quotes heard on Fox News, and the latter samples quotes from various pro-life politicians, including Todd Akin's infamous "Legitimate rape" speech.
** ''[=AmericiKKKant=]'' frequently does this with Donald Trump soundbites - AlbumIntroTrack "I Know Words" is entirely Trump samples over eerie synthesized strings, including some satirical ManipulativeEditing ("we will make America stupid again")

** Rather improbably, ''The Land of Rape and Honey'' is actually the '''official motto''' of the city of Tisdale, Saskatchewan, referring to the town's significant production of rapeseed and honey. Al chose the title after seeing the motto on a souvenir mug and being amused at what how ''completely wrong'' it sounded.

** "Happy Dust" is a very different piece for the 90's era of the band, being an Music/EnnioMorricone-influenced instrumental with no overt industrial metal elements. It was used for intro/outro music for concerts supporting ''Filth Pig'', and years later appeared as a BSide to the "Bad Blood" single.

* DarkIsNotEvil: Same as Trent Reznor, Al Jourgensen in RealLife's an okay dude.

* JerkAss: Al's built up quite a reputation for this over the years.
* LeadBassist: Paul Barker, from 1987 to 2003.

* IAmTheBand: Al Jourgensen IS Ministry.

* DarkIsNotEvil: Same as Trent Reznor, Al Jourgensen in RealLife's an okay dude. Well, to be fair, Ministry isn't as angsty as Music/NineInchNails...

* SpiritualSuccessor: Chris Connelly's new band Cocksure to the Revolting Cocks.
** Lard could be seen as this to Pailhead - industrial-punk groups consisting of the then-current lineup of Ministry plus a well-known HardcorePunk singer ([[Music/MinorThreat Ian McKaye]] for Pailhead, [[Music/DeadKennedys Jello Biafra]] for Lard).

* Burton C. Bell - vocals (2008, 2018–present)

* {{Supergroup}}: Pigface.

** Debut single ''I'm Falling / Cold Life'' also sounds a bit different from much of anything they'd later do: "I'm Falling" is a PostPunk song influenced by British groups like Music/TheCure and Music/JoyDivision, "Cold Life" is a funk song, and "Primental" is a disco instrumental (albeit one that would be repurposed WithLyrics as the ''With Sympathy'' track "I Wanted To Tell Her")

Jourgensen finally retired Ministry in 2008 after recording the covers album ''Cover Up''. He spent the next few years focusing on running his record label 13th Planet Records and concentrating on his side projects Revolting Cocks and Lard. However, as of late 2011 the band is active again, with old standbys Scaccia, Bechdel and Quirin, plus new guys Aaron Rossi and Casey Orr, and a new album, ''Relapse'', was released in 2012. However, Scaccia died on December 23, 2012 onstage while performing with Rigor Mortis. Gathering recordings Scaccia made between Relapse and his death, Ministry's thirteenth album, ''From Beer to Eternity'', was released in late 2013, and the band toured in support of the album. They also announced the release of their fourteenth album, ''[=AmeriKKKant=]'', for fall 2017 only to later push back the release date to March 9, 2018. Ministry spent the latter part of 2019 supporting Music/{{Slayer}} on the North American leg of their ''The Final Campaign Tour''. A tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of ''The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste'' was planned for 2020, but this was postponed several times due to factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic and is currently scheduled for 2022. They released their 15th album, ''Moral Hygiene'', in 2021, to generally positive reviews.

* ContemptibleCover:
** ''The Land of Rape and Honey'', once you realize what it is... [[spoiler:An out-of-focus head shot of a dead man, taken from the Buchenwald concentration camp.]]
** ''From Beer to Eternity'' could be considered this as well, although according to WordOfGod it's not supposed to be sexy. The women on the cover are intended to be representations of the SevenDeadlySins and are barely supposed to look human. YMMV on how much this succeeded.

* UncommonTime: The main riff of "Animosity" is in 9/4. The verse riff of "Impossible" alternates between 4/4 and 7/8. Main riff of "Kaif" has three bars in 4/4 and one in 5/4.

* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: 2-3 for their synthpop, hard 8-solid 9 for their industrial metal.

'''Current lineup (as of late 2017 tour)'''

* Sin Quirin - guitars (2007–2008, 2011-2013, 2014–present)

Jourgensen finally retired Ministry in 2008 after recording the covers album ''Cover Up''. He spent the next few years focusing on running his record label 13th Planet Records and concentrating on his side projects Revolting Cocks and Lard. However, as of late 2011 the band is active again, with old standbys Scaccia, Bechdel and Quirin, plus new guys Aaron Rossi and Casey Orr, and a new album, ''Relapse'', was released in 2012. However, Scaccia died on December 23, 2012 onstage while performing with Rigor Mortis. Gathering recordings Scaccia made between Relapse and his death, Ministry's thirteenth album, ''From Beer to Eternity'', was released in late 2013, and the band toured in support of the album. They also announced the release of their fourteenth album, ''[=AmeriKKKant=]'', for fall 2017 only to later push back the release date to March 9, 2018. Ministry spent the latter part of 2019 supporting Slayer on the North American leg of their ''The Final Campaign Tour''. A tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of ''The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste'' was planned for 2020, but this was postponed several times due to factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic and is currently scheduled for 2022. They released their 15th album, ''Moral Hygiene'', in 2021, to generally positive reviews.

Jourgensen finally retired Ministry in 2008 after recording the covers album ''Cover Up''. He spent the next few years focusing on running his record label 13th Planet Records and concentrating on his side projects Revolting Cocks and Lard. However, as of late 2011 the band is active again, with old standbys Scaccia, Bechdel and Quirin, plus new guys Aaron Rossi and Casey Orr, and a new album, ''Relapse'', was released in 2012. However, Scaccia died on December 23, 2012 onstage while performing with Rigor Mortis. Gathering recordings Scaccia made between Relapse and his death, Ministry's thirteenth album, ''From Beer to Eternity'', was released in late 2013, and the band toured in support of the album. They also announced the release of their upcoming fourteenth album, ''[=AmeriKKKant=]'', for fall 2017 only to later push back the release date to March 9, 2018.

* [[Music/{{Slipknot}} Joey Jordison]] - drums (2006, 2018)

** "Isle of Man" depicts a future where mankind has wiped itself out due to pollution and depletion of natural resources.

Ministry finally had its main breakthrough with ''Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs''. Besides providing the best example of their balls-out HotBlooded IndustrialMetal sound and the triple guitar attack of Jourgensen, Mike Scaccia and Louis Svitek, it showed the band's sense of humour through the CrazyAwesome hit single "Jesus Built My Hotrod" (with nonsense vocals by Gibby Haynes of the Music/ButtholeSurfers) and provided arguably one of the first {{Stupid Statement Dance Mix}}es with "N.W.O." ''Psalm 69'' gained them a mainstream audience and would prove to be their most critically acclaimed and commercially successful album.

* BloodSplatteredInnocents: The cover for "Filth Pig" shows a guy with his head covered in blood, who's also [[NoodleImplements holding an American flag and wearing a badge saying "Don't Blame Me".