Ministry – Evil Doer Tour Vancouver

The short story: Loud and Fun! Classic Ministry!

Carol and I went to the Ministry show last night. We had a gas! There was the usual possé of whackos that we see at the metal shows we go to. I guess it’s a fairly small community so we often see the same folks from show to show. The first band, Hanzel und Gretyl, were great. Their set was extremely loud and mostly in German (which I don’t understand), but cool all the same. It was unsettling to see a creepy German dude marching around dressed up like the Kaiser with two skinny ugly chicks and a drummer who kept standing up on his kit and flipping off the crowd. They started off with a song in English called “Third Reich from the Sun”. Here’s a sample: 3rd-reich-sample.mp3 (240kb MP3). You can hear the whole thing on their website under the “interactive” section. We must buy the CD. Here’s a review of Uber Alles.

The second band was an industrial musical intitution know as My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. In a word: sucked. I was extremely disappointed by them and after a few songs I was ready to slap the lead singer, Groovie Mann, who was stoned out of his melon, mumbling nonsense and saying things like “I don’t know where I am”. Nice. I paid a portion of $40 per tickets to watch this asshole fall all over himself. Not much better was the 200+ pound fat chick singing backup. She was squeezed into a corset she was pouring out of from all possible seams and creases. Gross. I need brainwashing to erase the memory of it. After about 3 songs I felt like a hostage in a bank hold up just waiting to be set free.

Last but surely not least was freakshow Al Jourgensen and Ministry. Holy shit! They were great. The first thing we saw was someone in a George W Bush mask flipping off the crowd. Then AL J came out and beat the tar out of George. He really wailed on the guy. They just went full throttle and didn’t stop. The band did a pile of songs from their latest offering, Houses of the Molé (which I love) and tore the place up with NWO, Just one Fix and Thieves to name a few of the ‘oldies’. The place went nuts for those. I was extremely happy with what I saw and heard for the main set and would have went away satisfied at just that.

The encore, however, went even further. A person who I didn’t recognize at first (as he was so fat) came out on stage and began ranting about Geroge W Bush attempting to reinstate the draft and working behind the scenes with the Canadian government to prevent draft dodging by changing laws ‘behind our backs’. Who was this? Why, Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys fame of course. He has worked with Al Jourgensen on a number of projects, not the least of which was a band called Lard. We were treated to some Lard live last night with Jello on vocals. A very cool surprise.

Jello, lay off the pasta and doughnuts. It doesn’t look good on you.

We went home with smiles on our faces and ringing ears (they’re still going)…