The Land of Rape And Honey
	Produced by Hypo Luxa and Hermes Pan (track 11 by Eddie Echo)
	Released on November 1988
	US CHART POSITION #164
	Find it at GEMM
9 25799-2 cover [high resolution scan]

A n alarm went off with this music. Ministry doesn’t just push the panic button, they play it like an instrument. And that alarm signaled the beginning of a new age, an Industrial one that understood that the logical progression past pleasure was pain (Hellraisers indeed). The Sex Pistols redefined music by rejecting it, an idea that caught on with other acts like The Psychedelic Furs. Listening to “Deity” versus a song like The Furs’ “Fall,” you’ll see that the ‘80s weren’t all in vain. Ministry achieves what The Furs’ (and a lot of the early punk movement) were after: rejecting a generation by rejecting its ideals of beauty. Not that Ministry arrived in this Age alone; Nine Inch Nails and Nitzer Ebb showed up at the party around the same time, and all of them owe a great debt to groundbreaking acts like Cabaret Voltaire and Joy Division. But Ministry and the new metal movement didn’t just pervert club music, they beat you with club music. I think of that scene in Hellraiser 3 or 4 (the one that sucked, or maybe they both sucked), where the nightclub turns into a portal to Hell, and that’s a natural milieu for this music. It goes past the red into the realm of ugly distortion and doesn’t blink or retreat. Honestly, it’s destruction you could almost dance to. “Stigmata” and “You Know What You Are” are the living end. The rest of the record is an Armageddon in progress. Like two kids who received a military arsenal for Christmas, Jourgensen and Barker are more interested in maximum destruction than taking out specific targets on Land. But from here on out, they couldn’t be ignored.

9 25799-2 gatefold sleeve

TRACK LISTING

1. STIGMATA    5:45
2. THE MISSING    2:55
3. DEITY    3:20
4. GOLDEN DAWN    5:42
5. DESTRUCTION    3:30
6. (CD bonus track:) HIZBOLLAH    3:58
7. THE LAND OF RAPE AND HONEY    5:10
8. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE    4:43
9. I PREFER    2:15
10. FLASHBACK    4:50
11. ABORTIVE    4:23

CREDITS

PAUL BARKER -- engineer
ALAIN JOURGENSEN -- engineer
Chris Connelly -- additional musician
William Rieflin -- additional musician
Keith Auerbach -- engineer
Julian Herzfeld -- engineer
Steve Spapperi -- engineer
Dog, Ill, Shanley -- cover

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