Houses Of The Mole

インダストリアル界の重鎮として君臨するMINISTRYの2004年リリース9THスタジオ・アルバム『HOUSES OF THE MOLE』がMUSIC ON VINYLに登場!

前作から1年半ぶりとなる作品で、PAUL BARKERが脱退し実質、AL JOURGENSENのソロプロジェクトとして制作されたアルバム。REY WASHAMをゲストに迎えた"NO"W"などを収録しています。

Released in 2003, Animositisomina might've brought Ministry back from the dead, but it's Houses of the Mole that fully resurrects everyone's favorite ghoul. Guv-hating Al Jourgensen is back, and he's siphoned the gas from Jesus' hotrod for a new squadron of industro-thrash devil machines. In music and platform, Mole is like a rebroadcast from the year 1992, and that's exactly Jourgensen's point. Hate the new boss, same as the old boss. Where once there was "N.O.W.," there is now "No W," and a new batch of soundbites to paint the Prez as a spooky Orwellian snake trader. Jourgensen's words are a blunt-edged rant. "Ask me why you feel deceived/And stripped of all your liberties/It doesn't take a genius to explain that today." His cynicism is bolted to rabid programmed beats and Mike Scaccia's roaring guitar; in the background nihilism sharpens its teeth with a Rambo knife. In this way Mole carries through nine official tracks. They all start with "W"; they're all stripped of everything but stuttering, unforgiving percussion, tuneless blasts of guitar, and Jourgensen's acid spit. Psalm 69 was a similar screed, but it had arrangements and even some biting sarcasm. There's just corrosion 12 years later, as any levity's scraped, melted, and reshaped into ammunition for a new fight. With Mole, Jourgensen has mobilized the fatalism and fury that always rumbled through industrial and thrash music, and left everything else in the staging area. There are detours, but they're to places no "good" citizens go. "Warp City" teems in its own twisted amorality, while "WTV" is the Ludovico technique turned in on itself, a numbing tumble of media snippets beaming through shards of industrial waste. (The Law & Order drop-in is notable and telling.) "World" breaks the album's relentless thrashing pace, and hopes for a planet "where people aren't afraid," but it's still guided by an undercurrent of pessimism. Instead of empty wishes, Ministry offers buckets of clenching bile. There are no melodies here, no innovation. Creativity has hardened into apathy; it's gone into hiding until the culture war ends. Houses of the Mole isn't really music, it's hard tack -- sustenance for wartime. ~ Johnny Loftus