“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do to get these clowns out.”
There you go. A manifesto for our times, and one that seems entirely appropriate for Al Jourgensen. There is plenty to be angry about, plenty to despair at, and absolutely no prospect of Uncle Al sitting quietly while any of it happens.
Billed as Ministry’s final studio album, “Hate To Go (Take Out Or Delivery)” arrives with a considerable amount to get off its chest. You’d imagine that Jourgensen could keep going for another decade on the material the world is currently supplying him with.
“You can either use your voice or lose your voice,” comes the warning on “Crickets”, and that establishes the stakes pretty quickly. Silence is a choice, too, and Ministry have no intention of making it. The opening is confrontational, urgent and delivered with the sort of force that makes ignoring it difficult.
“Voices Of Hate” makes its feelings equally clear. Woody Guthrie reckoned all the fascists were bound to lose. Al is a bit more direct. “F.U.C.K.O.F.F.” doesn’t leave much room for misinterpretation, and there’s something wonderfully satisfying about the sheer bluntness of it all.
Then “Clown Car” arrives, heroically heavy and working on the entirely reasonable assumption that we’re all crammed into this ridiculous vehicle together and it’s going to crash. The absurdity is funny until you consider the consequences. Ministry make sure you feel those, too.
There’s a nightmarish quality to “We Hate”, as Jourgensen excoriates Trump with the venom you’d expect. It won’t be the last time his name hangs over proceedings. The ugliness of the music suits the subject, and the sense of everything becoming increasingly grotesque gives the song its power.
“Delete” turns its attention to the other thing apparently occupying every waking moment. Eat, sleep and scroll. Repeat until your brain turns to mush. Its attack on social media belongs here, because the endless noise, outrage and distraction are part of the same miserable picture. You can almost feel your thumb reaching for the screen while Al tells you exactly how stupid that is.
“Grifter”, though, feels like the centrepiece. Trump’s idiocy is firmly in the firing line again, and there’s a particular conviction to the way Jourgensen tears into it. The anger has somewhere to go, the song has the weight to carry it, and everything that has been building through the first half finds a focus. It’s a sustained, furious dismantling.
“The White Man Lied” follows the connection between evil and greed, widening the scope while keeping the disgust intact. By this point, you can’t fail to notice just how heavy this record is. The words would be caustic enough on their own; the music gives them a physical impact.
That’s particularly true of “Singularity”. “We are just hamsters,” growls Al, as the machines take over and humanity apparently keeps running around its little wheel. There’s a horrible plausibility to the whole thing, which makes its crushing intensity all the more effective.
“Burned Out” is batshit crazy, appropriately enough for a song caught in a world where truth and lies have become increasingly difficult to separate. Beneath the chaos, though, comes the thought that gives the record its purpose: we’re all dead unless we unite. Exhaustion hasn’t quite extinguished the possibility of resistance.
“We’re Still Here”, featuring Paul Barker, brings a calmer conclusion. There’s a stoicism to it, a sense of having endured the madness and still being around to have your say.
I’ve never needed a rock star to tell me what to think. Al Jourgensen is going to do it anyway, of course, and you suspect he couldn’t stop himself if he tried. He sees the grifters, the greed and the idiocy, and out it all comes. When it’s delivered with this much conviction, and music this bloody heavy, you’re going to listen.
He’s still here, still saying exactly what he thinks.
Maybe he always will be.
8.5/10
