CD Review: Ministry The Last Sucker

While Ministry’s final album is a full-frontal acid bath full of recriminations against the state of American politics, it lacks the depth to really motivate the listener and doesn’t stand up to the classic members of Ministry’s catalog.

Pros

Cons

Believe it or not, Al Jourgensen is finally retiring Ministry after 26 years with one last hurrah: The Last Sucker, the final chapter in three albums of Bush baiting and Cheney spearing pursued by Ministry since Houses of the Mole (2004). With The Last Sucker, Ministry takes its parting shots at the departing administration, decries the war in Iraq, blasts George W. Bush for empty policies and Dick Cheney for an empty soul, and then winds up with an apocalyptic look at the present state of society. It’s an angry, angry album, but at the same time it’s got a huge flaw: The Last Sucker just isn’t that powerful.

Oh, sure, it says all of the right things, makes a statement and in general delivers all of the fury you’d expect of a political album, but at the same time The Last Sucker is so over-the-top with its vitriol that it seems almost cartoonish and heavy-handed, losing its ability to motivate the user to outrage. Case in point: the end of “End of Days Part Two,” which ends in a repeating chord progression supporting a sound clip of all four minutes plus of President Eisenhower’s farewell speech, where he warns about the rising threat of the military industrial complex. Bludgeoned by the painfully obvious connections to today’s political climate, all you can think is, ‘enough, enough, I get the point.’