I was vaguely aware of this band called "Ministry" when I attended high school. Then I came back(?) to Houston for uni. In 1987 I was hardly old enough to watch the Numbers concert. If Ministry came to Houston in 1993ish, I suspect they would have upgraded venue past my means, Psalm 69 being their best seller.
But I'm not getting into all that. I've lately been wondering about their earliest stuff. Once I was old enough for #s (and for Power Tools, another club over there) I started (re?)hearing material like "Revenge" and "Halloween". This synthpop was very very different from "nWo" (which the venues also played of course) or that hotrod song. Ministry did interviews in which "Al Jourgensen" - not the frontman's Christian name, but what he goes by - had to address his first album. I recall he called With Sympathy an "abortion". We'll get to Al's 1990s-era edginess, too...
Al was adopted into the Jourgensen household, -ish, in the 1960s. He is in fact Cuban, a refugee from the socialist island paradise - but not by his own choice. In 1980 he got with some friends in Chicago and formed Ministry. They played several gigs, which were semi-successful, but when Al got his cut, it wasn't enough to live on. Al squatted in a 9th/Roosevelt garret, like Aladdin in that cartoon. Electricity was stolen, even the cable he used to steal the electricity was stolen (from Ace). There was no roof. "Halloween", although you'd think it was a poser song (he had money by the time the 1981-1984 collection came out with it) comes from real memories.
All these songs are readily available on Youtube and several other places: live performances, demos from indie label Wax Trax (where Al worked), and With Sympathy which Al historically hasn't cared if you pirate. It's even on archive.org.
Al's first Ministry was postpunk with a lusciously fake British accent. Among Sprite's 1990s radio-spots was a 1980s pop parody, mocking exactly that American tendency to fake accents. "I'm Falling" (1980) attempts to pick up from Joy Division's later work; later they lean harder on the synth. Not at all unlike... New Order! Although Ministry go more to the Rust Belt underclass experience, of working crap jobs, dealing with semiloyal women, and dodging the cops and the criminals both. Think more, Eminem's Infinite era; Ministry in fact played several gigs up in Detroit too.
"I'm Falling" ends up as a B-side to the funkier "Cold Life" (1982), bass from Lamont Welton. Somewhere around here is voice-distorted "Same Old Madness", "Hardman", and synth-driven "Revenge". Al now claims he also had "All Day", "Nature of Love", and "Halloween" in 1983; a version of "All Day" will end up on... Twitch. As Ministry became a synth band Robert Roberts became at least as important to the music as Al himself.
So in 1983 Arista / Clive Davis rang up Al, to produce an album. (They obviously hadn't heard the full set.) Al agreed - immediately. Took the money. Took the ticket.
Al gamely spent the rest of 1983 and 1984 promoting this album. His set had other work, like "So So Life", and minimalist "Anything for You". And... that was it. Al spent (almost) the rest of his four decade career dissing his own debut. Until, basically... now.
Last year Al delivered an interview, explaining With Sympathy and promising to play some of that stuff in future, at least "Revenge" which as noted precedes the "abortion". So here we learn: Al had the master tapes burned, excepting whatever his ex-wife had.
Clive Davis did tell Al what he was up for: final approval of everything. His manager became Eliot Roberts who'd done the Cars, which Boston studio he was to use. They cut his hair like Robert Smith, and made him wear Armani. One can also observe the liner notes: to the extent the Ministry playing the Lakes circuit had been an actual band; With Sympathy is just Al, treating his erstwhile bandmates like Rob2 as session-musicians equal to whomever the other Roberts and Davis were digging out of the Boston scene. Whatever Ministry was developing into, was not what Arista was going to put out.
Because if you look at "All Day", it really is a step beyond "I'm Falling" and "Overkill". "All Day" is not about some older Marshall Mathers bitchin' about his jerb. Al now has the bossman (nice Caribbean word, b.t.w.) drinking champagne whilst Al works. We're questioning the hierarchy of business. We're close to questioning capitalism (although bossmen outside Reagan-era Chicago-Detroit, like Elon Musk, do camp out on the floor).
Well... Arista sure delivered that lesson on Reaganism.
On to Twitch and beyond... "We Believe" and "Just Like You" get political, asking English-speakers to sit out the Cold War. The title track of Land of Rape and Honey - an actual town slogan, in Canada - trashes the life of Moses, from Sinai to the book of Numbers; so the theme here is Christian televangelism. The band claim that both of these albums had stuff written way earlier, assuredly true of Twitch (which should have included "America"). I don't know about the later one although "Stigmata"'s lyrics read like a still-darker "Revenge". I guess the political album didn't have the room for a Christian-themed song, which a religious album opened up.
Anyway once we get to "Thieves" on A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste, we're into the uninteresting Ministry we got now. This Ministry can do a "nWo" against neoliberal Bushism one year and "Just Stop Oil" for... globalist liberalism the next year. Rise up for freedom! - denounce "misinformation". There's no lodestone beyond "Republicans bad, death to America". Music For Your HR Department.
I think Arista broke the man.