Ministry

At its peak, Ministry made the loudest, ugliest, most uncompromising music out there -- or at least the loudest, ugliest, most uncompromising music out there worth listening to. Like fellow pop industrial-ist Trent Reznor, Ministry frontman Alain Jourgensen learned his doofy goth clichés from the inside when he led a drippy synth band. But unlike Reznor, Jourgensen learned to play gloom and doom for laughs later on. By the time production began on The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, he'd figured out that keyboards could sound at least as hard as guitars. Ministry's sound -- heavy, fast, anonymous -- is showcased in its purest form on In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up, six unrelenting slabs of rhythmic oppression with Jourgensen's drill-sergeant bark emanating from somewhere below. On Psalm 69, his conceptual gifts caught up with his sonic smarts. The ideas are simple but effective: a loop of George H. W. Bush whinily intoning "A New World Order"; ghastly choirs wailing over a creepy Christian testimonial; and, best of all, the Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes ranting dementedly about "Jesus Built My Hotrod."

Jourgensen instantly became a victim of his own success. He found his niche market and he decided to work it. "Lay Lady Lay" is kinda fun, but the rest of Filth Pig is sludge. He's been pumping sewage into the marketplace ever since -- arty sewage, which is just that much more pathetic. His career trajectory would be less sad if his success hadn't been so limited, his niche so tiny. The joke's on him. (KEMBREW MCLEOD)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide