Ministry fans have been hearing rumors of this thing since… well since I was in high school, so that’s quite some time ago. We all knew Ministry’s wasn’t really retired, however in the interim Grandpa Jourgensen finally delivered on that ‘country’ album he’d been talking about for the better part of three decades and Buck Satan and the 666 Shooters is here! The album came out last week, I’ve not bought it yet, but the entire thing is streaming up at, ahem, revolver magazine’s website so go take a listen here. I don’t love every song as much as I do this one, but what I like I like quite a bit and what’s on the narrows has grown on me considerably.

DON’T FALL FOR IMPOSTERS

One of the interesting things about tracking this project for the better part of a year and a half is aside from a few interviews Al did where he discussed the group  the only other stuff online I could find for the longest time was the band site buck satan.com (NOT linked on purpose, keep reading) and although the mock Usual Suspects motiff didn’t outright clash with where I thought Jourgenson’s head might be, once I clicked on the music for the first time it was VERY obvious this was not Jourgensen. From what little I’ve been able to discern someone got sick of waiting for the real band and grabbed up the domain, started using the name for their own shitty band (unless this is a joke – as I initially suspected – Al was playing) and then went around accruing facebook and myspace hits based on others believing they were Al & Company.

Boo.

NEW MINISTRY

This of course comes a little over a month after the Occupy movement rallied Al and crew to release the first new Ministry single, 99%, on iTunes. I’m a loooong time Ministry/Revco/Lard fan and although I usually find it’s better for my musical favorites to go out on top, I won’t judge the new Ministry album – titled Relapse – by my initial experiences with this song, which I’ve tried to keep to a minimum so as not to damage the integrity of the album as a whole when it is released on March 23rd. 99% is not a bad song, but on its own it is certainly not breaking any new ground or even continuing to fill out the buzz-saw-and-stress-fractures sound george w inspired on the mostly wonderful trilogy of  albums Houses of the Mole, Rio Grande Blood and brilliant Last Sucker.

Either way, hitting play on a new Ministry album is usually like opening a bottle of a long-time favorite seasonal beer, so here’s to hoping.