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Rating: As my first review on DeBaser, I have chosen an album that has profoundly marked me on an emotional level for several reasons. My reviews are long, so I'll warn you right away, if you want the telegraphic review it is: wonderful album but certainly not for everyone. Now I'll move on to describe in detail what makes this album special.
"Dark Side Of The Spoon" was created by Ministry during a period, 1997/8 (and released in 1999) of profound depression for the two masterminds of the project (namely the singer and guitarist Al Jourgensen and the legendary bassist and programmer Paul Barker, the true cornerstone of Ministry's songwriting from 1988-2003): the sludge/metal turn of a wonderful album but rejected by fans like "Filth Pig" and an exhausting tour left both exhausted and at the mercy of addiction to substances like heroin, alcohol, and cocaine. Add the disappearance in 1997 of two figures from the counterculture dear to Ministry also on a personal level, such as the legendary writer William S. Burroughs (who acted in the splendid single of "Just One Fix" at the time of psalm 69), and that in 1996 of the LSD guru Timothy Leary (who even participated in an album by Revolting Cocks), to whom the album is dedicated, add the talent of drummer Ray Washam (who previously played with Scratch Acid, and later with Steve Albini's rough Rapeman) and songwriting that truly doesn't care about sounding "mainstream" or "radio friendly" (just like the production, although the song "Bad Blood" will end up in the soundtrack of "Matrix"), and an abundant dose of bile with a touch of black humor, in addition to the already mentioned ingredients, and you will have an album that instead of breaking bones (the prerogative of Ministry of always)... will break your stomach and a little bit your heart.
It starts with "Supermanic Soul", industrial metal at its simplest and most captivating, but already from the next "Whip And Chain" the atmosphere becomes layered, the keyboards are present again in the Ministry sound, and the drums bastardize Jourgensen's filtered singing. "Bad Blood", as mentioned, is a single to give breath and that helped Ministry not to shut down during this period, while the next "Eureka Pile" is the first delightful surprise of the album: incredible rhythm section, where Barker's bass and Washam's drums grind hypnotic notes with a backdrop of Middle Eastern samples while a cynical Jourgensen sings with a "Stigmata" tone (meaning not shouted, more mocking and defiant), for minutes and minutes this song becomes a true musical description of a trip. A trip that passes with the comic/tragic "Step": a bit of jazz and swing combined with the industrial sound of Ministry and Jourgensen's lyrics never so comical, despite everything ("I just want to thank/All my fabulous fans/For being loyal to me during these troubled times/I love you all, really/ I wish I could take you all to the Betty Ford Center with me!!!") - enjoyable, the right breath between two strange and disorienting rock formations like the just-past "Eureka Pile" and the following track 6, "Nursing Home": saxophone samples mistreated on another 10-star base created by Barker and Washam, with Jourgensen continuing to declaim in his tone of the previous songs, without screaming, but clarifying, arguing, exorcising in his way the shit he felt inside. A difficult track if you don't like challenges and if you are satisfied with the industrial metal of KMFDM (I mean the one done by Konietzko without Esch and Watts, as that would be another story)... difficult to digest as much as it might sound "fun", in reality, Ministry will admit to having recorded the album in lousy mood conditions, and if you look under the sardonic smile, it is clearly seen.
The "classic" Ministry returns with the dark and sad "Kaif": bone-crushing bass and guitar, loud band in full force for a slow and angry nocturne, with a rarely so expressive Jourgensen. "Vex & Siolence" instead passes the mic to Paul Barker, the primary author of the track, which with his cerebral manner sounds heavy but again, as in previous tracks, perhaps too cerebral to be enjoyable for just a light listening to the album. And so is the last track "10/10", instrumental with tortured sax and band in the background. Ultimately, at the end of the journey, this album, paradoxically created by an industrial metal band (and which should therefore sound only "evil" to many), is in reality bound to a much more cerebral conception of sound and songwriting: it requires commitment from the listener, both for the lyrics and the production, going through the lucubrations or paranoias expressed in the lyrics or in the obsessive repetition of a riff to physical exhaustion. A wonderful album, deeper than it appears on the surface: a highly underrated pearl, and unique in the world of Ministry: give it a chance.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Supermanic Soul (03:13)
(spoken sample: "take this first song and uh, dance
I mean this, uh, first, let's start playing and dance.")
Well I just shot a man to death
I磛e got a bullet out of my head
He fired back and I can磘 stop
A final shot and a final breath
Afraid to stop and afraid to check
The smell of fear and the color red
Had him with a 2 inch shell
Well it磗 a brutal smell of death (* 4)
Saw my reflection in a spoon.
I had it with my not approved excuse (--> ???)
I磛e got a supermanic soul
I磛e pulled the trigger in the record room (* 2)
I磛e put a stop to his loonytoons
I磛e put him down in the record room
These are for you
Dead - break this
These are for you
Dead - break this
Dead!
(talking samples)
These are for you
Dead - break this
These are for you
Dead - break this * 3
03 Bad Blood (04:58)
What's lies?
Full moon and thoughts collide
We look for answers in those catatonic, dying blod-shot eyes
We ask if vermin are the ones that already learned
Those aren't tears,
They're just bad bad blood
Just bad bad blood!
What lies?
No big surprise.
We get our clues from the ones who thought up they will conquer us
Are we too fucked to say the end is here too much?
We're in denial with bad blood
Do you remember the strain?
Do you remember the pain?
Do you remember who caused all the blame?
Bad Blood!
Do you remember me?
Do you remember us?
Do you surrender your dreams or your trust?
Bad Blood!
What lies?
He's finally come alive
Out of these mediocre plentiful things all the time
A steady stream of madness
Conscious to a flood
The clock is ticking for Bad Blood
04 Eureka Pile (06:22)
I seem to find myself each time I run away
Don't give me vivid in some yester body (selling) days ?
Sometimes they reappear just like the sands of time
Or d'ya like some quick sand baby running off my summer wine
Same faces broken homes
Those memories have fled
All tears within me now are dormant or dead
My viens are bursting with a thirst that you cannot ignore
Alright Eureka's Pile
Now my saviour, or my whore
There's a lot that they don't mind when things aren't what they seem
I always wake up baby cos I always wake up me
My life may ain't come to much
Ignore my history
Least my Eureka Pile can see some way I feel
Ain't the way I see (* 2)
My Eureka Pile and me.
05 Step (04:06)
I need help
I need help
I don't know who I am no more
I'm gonna get some help
Help me
Step! Step, step it up baby!
Got a question for you: like, who, what, where, why?
Are we even here?
Or are we following alone like another lost Indian looking for his tribe?
Oh dial the phone.
We might as well find someone else.
???
Grrr!
(wails)
I like to apologize to all my wonderful fans
For sticking by me through such troubled times
I love all you so much
I wish I could take you all to the Betty Ford Clinic
Yeah
Step! Step it up baby!
We gotta sell instutions of recovery,
We gotta kill distrubutions of the pills I take!
???
Grr!
Step! Step it up baby!
I love all my fans
Through these times of nakedness
If I could I'd take any one of you with me
Put you right underneath my pillow
[fade out..]
06 Nursing Home (07:02)
The moat in my eyes never bring me no sleep
Just to strap me inside with the demons I keep
Gotta leave me alone gotta let it be lone
Tired of living, too tight to die
Making sharks keep swimming when he don't know why
Gotta get the lean fin
Only thing that he wears
Not dead yet just moving kinda slow
Not dead yet just doesn't let go
Not dead yet just leave me alone
Not dead yet in the Nursing Home
Sleeping and rocking and an old man comes
Just to prop up my feet with a broken old hose
Stop riding those rails
Stop setting those sails
He likes boom boogie
He's got an old trombone
While he's stamping out the fires with a broken beat tone
Got a troubled soul
Burning hot and cold
(Chorus)
I've been alive ten years in the Nursing Home!
Thinking on water (????????)
He needs to keep that gravy on the wake of pot roast
Got a fire inside
He's gonna burn him alive
Talking in circles 'til the roof is blown
Got a bed three-squared in the Nursing Home
Gotta say bye-bye
He's gotta walk on by
07 KAIF (05:25)
I love the silence I'm in.
I think I dreamed this before
Some lives seem so incomplete
Some just keep coming back for more
Where did the time go?
I can't remember how it end
Don't even know who I am
A fading memory
A fading image redrawn
Can't wait for ever more
Where did the time go?
Remember things I never said
I've seen the faces before
I hope the future is dead
The dead keep asking for more
Where did the time go?
08 Vex & Siolence (05:24)
If the child slaughtered
Then found later
Wrapped up and withered
After many years
Crawled out from under untold layers
To take a shallow breath and listen
What would it hear?
Would the child answer
Full of anger
Full of rage & bloodlust spoken but never shown
With a seeming riddle
Or a puzzle
Neither the brutal nor the timid could have known
Deep down inside, too dark to see
The sex commands a shot of something
What violent alter could there be?
Here is the end
Here is nothing
Nothing
After breathing in the beginning?
After beating through what wasn't there
Death became the only answer, but not the cure
The final act became the meaning
No-one cared
Deep down inside, too dark to see
The sex commands a shot of something
What violent alter could there be?
Here is the end
Here is nothing
Nothing
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