Ministry: Twitch - Twitch Album Reviewed by SongBlog

Ministry have evolved, perhaps more so than many other bands. Their sound has become unrecognisable from their formative years. When Al Jourgensen started out he was synthpop, more Howard Jones than Motorhead. That first album With Sympathy (known as Work for Love here in the UK), was commercial and radio friendly, adapted to the music trends of 1983. In the years since Jourgensen has disowned it but it remains a fan favourite.

Ministry's second album three years later begins to edge their sound closer to what we recognise now. It is harsher, more abrasive and owes more to Front Line Assembly and Front 242 than to any of the synthpop artists of a few years back. It's the first album that sampling is used, something that has become a hallmark of the Ministry sound (as well as the turbo-charged guitar riffs and Al's scream- singing). The production is still routed in the 1980's with it's clean edges and sharp programmed beats but the element of grind is starting to penetrate.

Jourgensen's voice is heavily filtered and distorted throughout giving it that familiar mid/late eighties industrial burr, like the whirring of blades cutting through steel pipe. This would be taken to the ultimate limit on the following album Land of Rape and Honey and in particular the track 'Stigmata', where Uncle Al's voice could have been replaced with a circular saw going through a scaffolding pole.

The album flits between heavy, dark and aggresive industrial with tracks like 'We Believe', 'Where You at Now?/Crash And Burn/Twitch' and brighter synthpop of 'Over The Shoulder', 'All Day and The Angel.'

This album sits alongside Cabaret Voltaire's output of the same period in particular Micro-Phonies and Drinking Gasoline. It sits just off the mainstream but has cross-over appeal certainly among the alternative club set.

This was just another signpost on the way to Al Jourgensen's re-invention as an industrial metal titan. By the time we reach ''Psalm 69 in 1992 the reprogramming is complete and the gradual shift from industrial to metal is in full sway.