Ministry, "Revenge": The Best Songs Ever Recorded By Anyone Ever

If you know one thing about the band Ministry, it’s that they were at the popular forefront of industrial metal in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Albums like The Land Of Rape And Honey and Psalm 69 combined power chords and shrieked warnings of totalitarianism and torture to come with pummeling, robotic percussion. Though not without precedent (i.e. fellow Chicagoans Big Black, and lots of Europeans distributed by Chicago label Wax Trax), the major-label-backed Ministry helped set the stage for Nine Inch Nails and White Zombie. Orgy’s cover of “Blue Monday” is totally Ministry’s fault.

If you know a second thing about Ministry, it’s that they first made the scene as a truly candy-ass synth band, leader Al Jourgensen attempting a hilarious fake British accent on their debut LP, With Sympathy. Yelping songs like “Effigy (I'm Not An),” “I Wanted To Tell Her,” and “Revenge,” Jourgensen sounded like a midwestern kid imitating Adam Ant in the shower, which he basically was. I’m not sure why Ministry didn’t change their name when moving from dance-pop to hard rock, or from Arista Records to Sire. Jourgensen was fine using other names for his many collaborations and Wax Trax-distributed side projects. Maybe he or Sire felt Ministry's brand still had commercial weight. As absurd at it was to have With Sympathy and A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste in front of the same record bin divider, it did help subvert the tastes of some synth-friendly college rockers.

If you know a third thing about Ministry, it’s that they’ve been a turgid, self-parodying, sample, shred & shout factory for nearly thirty years, recording numerous albums punning classic rock touchstones and/or affirming that Republican presidents are demonic poopy-heads determined to control us. Or rather, creating album covers that do those things. Musically, albums like Dark Side Of The Spoon, From Beer To Eternity and AmeriKKKant are, at best, none of my business. 

For as long as I’ve known Ministry, they basically refused to acknowledge With Sympathy, finding that period humiliating and blaming the record label for its affectations. Coincidentally, my family's babysitter circa ’92, a grad student with a quality college-pop cassette collection, refused to acknowledge anything they did after With Sympathy. Whenever they came up, she'd tell me they peaked with “Effigy (I'm Not An),” Lollapalooza be damned. (Fun bit of trivia: Vince Ely, the drummer associated with the most thunderous Psychedelic Furs albums, co-produced this dinkiest of Ministry albums.)

Forever a Libra, I think Ministry peaked twice. “Jesus Built My Hotrod,” a novelty number featuring Gibby from the Butthole Surfers, is a blistering, joyous techno-metal update of “Surfin’ Bird” that outshines everything from “Jordan, Minnesota” to “Dragula” in its breakneck, riotous glory. The other peak is “Revenge,” a seething slice of synth-pop so floridly ridiculous I can’t fathom how it got recorded, let alone promoted with a video.

(At this point, I should make like Chevy Chase and mime kisses to any Nitzer Ebb enthusiast circling fifty who can’t believe I just ranked “Hotrod” and “Revenge” at the top of the Ministry discography. Go tell your proctologist, Dirty Grandpa. Saint Albini thinks we’re both corny. *kiss kiss kiss*)

The less you know about “Revenge” before hearing it, the better. But here’s a list of moments to appreciate, in order of appearance.

1. The theremin-like, pitch-shifting synth line before he’s even said a word.
2. The opening couplet rhymes “floor” with “floor.”
3. Al Jourgensen describes “tum! bling! down!” like the love child of John Lydon and Phil Oakey.
4. “You watched as I rolled down the stairs/ you never wished me VERY well!”
5. Actually, Al says “you never wished me ‘Fare thee well!’” For years, my brain was substituting a slightly less ridiculous lyric for him.
6. It could be argued the first verse dignifies Al’s vocal performance by suggesting the narrator has a serious concussion.
7. “F-e-e-e-e-l”
8. “uh-GANE”
9. Fourteen of the thirty-odd words in the second verse are “far below.”
10. The third verse rhymes “quiet as a mouse” with “you rrrrrocked the house!”
11. Actually, it’s “throughout the house!” A-gane, it’s debatable which of our brains went to a sillier place.
12. “I heard a noise that made me startle/ but I kept on walking down the corridor." “Startle” is understandably buried, lest you dwell on the off-rhyme.
13. “The corridor!/ yes, the corridor!” I need an oral history on just this bit. Was it written down before being sung? Were there alternate rhymes for “corridor”? How many people had to OK the final product? How many were laughing?
14. From what I can gather, “Revenge” is about a lover either literally pushing Al down the stairs, or metaphorically doing so by cheating on him. After ruminating on this relationship low, he sneaks into their home via the window only to find her cheating again. Understandably, he’s had enough.
15. Between the repeated shouts of “ho!” and that synth squiggle, is it possible Michael Jackson was a fan of this song? Or, at least, Rockwell knew it? “Somebody’s Watching Me” did hit shelves about six months after the release of With Sympathy. I’ll let you decide which single was a goofier attempt at spooky, paranoid, fake-British synth-pop.

Amazing, right? I can’t help but smile every time I hear it. I loved playing it for guys who only knew the metallicized Ministry twenty years ago. But recently, around With Sympathy’s fortieth anniversary, Jourgensen had a different perspective on the material, and began to incorporate it live. Last March, Ministry released The Squirrely Years on new label Cleopatra (ask your snarkiest rock nerd friend about the label if you’re not already aware), re-recording twelve numbers from the synth-pop days, including “Revenge.” Tragically, this version is even more embarrassing for how desperately it avoids everything beautiful about the original.

1. While the synth-line still features that campy pitch-shift, it’s buried under a second synth and guitar chords that ask “did you know Orgy’s 'Blue Monday' is older now than New Order’s 'Blue Monday' was when Orgy did their cover?”
2. Al is now pushed through “double doors” before he “hit[s] the floor,” rather than pushed off “the thirteenth floor.”
3. After removing the “floor/floor” rhyme, he adds a “tumbling down”/“breaking down” rhyme. 
4. The first verse is now just two couplets long, avoiding the matter of “fare thee well!” entirely.
5. The 2025 version is more narratively coherent, and no longer uses the verb “roll” twice. But this newfound tact comes at the expense of drama. And lulz.
6. Couldn’t Al have added some exposition in the place of that rolling? Maybe establish why he’s being pushed through the double doors? And who’s doing the pushing?
7. Al might still be milking “feel,” but again, it’s buried under de rigueur sludge.
8. He’s not saying “uh-GANE,” though. He’s says “uh-gen” like just another rando. Where’s the kitschy spritz? The haughty vigor?
9. After the first chorus, Al completes the original first verse! He does mention not being wished “fare thee well!” But why this change? The 2025 version is ten seconds longer than the original. How is this gonna work, Al?
10. The new third verse is actually an extended version of the original second! He says “far below” even more times!
11. Instead of saying “ho!” at the end of lines, Al says “no!” It’s a rather strange, muted revision, as a cuck screaming “ho!” makes even more sense in 2025 than 1983. 
12. About three minutes into this version, the reason for the lyrical padding becomes clear: Al is not going to sing the original third verse. At all. In exchange for emphasizing “far below” even more than he did the first time, Al thinks he can get away with abjuring the corridor entirely.
13. Well, he can’t!
14. Fuck you, Al! Why couldn’t you just record Wish You Were Beer or Trumpawhorus Death if you weren’t willing to take “Revenge” head on? You didn’t redo “I Wanted To Tell Her” because you knew that was too funky a pop nugget to brave, but you thought you could bastardize this classic? Reclaiming your sell-out to make it duller? Congratulations on achieving a level of shameful meta shamelessness few bands could even imagine.
15. There’s a reprise of the chorus with extra plod at the end, to remind you this ain’t your Depeche Mode-loving babysitter’s Ministry, but a bunch of senior citizens with more piercings than brain cells, pumped to play before Avenged Sevenfold at the Drunk Dad Sweaty Metal Festival in Vegas this summer.

It’s Jourgensen’s copyright, and as long as I can still find the original in cyberspace, he’s welcome to do what he wants. But don’t give him too much credit for embracing the past. Unlike the anguished but eager tech enthusiast of his youth, today’s model is too skittish to learn what awaits him down the corridor. The corridor. Yes, the corridor.

If you want to tell me I'm underrating Ministry's 2009 album Banned On The Junk or that The Young Gods blow all this shit out of the water, feel free to try at anthonyisright at gmail dot com.