There’s very little honour among thieves these days, so when industrial provocateur/drug Jesus Al Jourgensen decided to weld the iron doors shut on Ministry after the death of guitarist Mike Scaccia in 2012, it felt like a remarkably noble gesture.
But if you thought that was the end of this dude’s reign of aural terror, forget it. Surgical Meth Machine is, essentially, Ministry on speed. Or maybe on meth. Or on bath salts. On some kinda drug that makes you tear out your own eyeballs and drive your car off a cliff.
A lot of this record sounds like Psalm 69 if you turned the drum machine to the ‘Blur’ setting, a snarling hyperspeed punkdustrial vomitorium of choppy samples and churning metal riffs.
It’s not all armed audio warfare, though. Unlistenable is a stuttering drum machine arguing with Al about the musical merits of Megadeth and Iron Maiden. Gates Of Steel is a clanging Clash rip-off, and Just Go Home is a cough medicine nightmare version of the old synth-pop Ministry. That shit’s pretty throwaway though. The meat is in the metal.
