Dark Side Of The Spoon

Al Jourgensen's Ministry are one of those bands - the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sonic Youth are two more - who once, back in the mists of time (eight years ago, in fact), radiated a certain affectation of danger, an air of left-field cool, an indefinable cachet of credibility. These days, though, they are as stale a proposition as last night's lasagne.

Everything about Dark Side Of The Spoon, from the jokey, heroin-alluding title to the gross-out cover artwork of a sickeningly obese naked woman, is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from Jourgensen (a man who once informed Melody Maker's Andrew Mueller, in the middle of an interview, that he was wearing nappies because he'd just shat himself) - and therein lies the problem.

Jourgensen undoubtedly sees himself and his band as fearless, liberal-baiting sleazeball buccaneers giving iconoclastic voice to society's sicker impulses, so it's deeply ironic that Dark Side's overriding characteristics are its sheer predictability and monotony.

The music is the usual mix of fast 'n' furious techno-metal and strangulatedly mechanical vox, with the odd zany sound effect thrown in, such as the deliberately incongruous sitar-plucking on 'Nursing Home' or the sax on '10/10'. At times it resembles The Fatima Mansions at their most revved-up and industrially brutal, without the admittedly considerable advantages of Cathal Coughlan's scabrous wit.

Now and again, the formula works, like on the fantastic opening track 'Supermanic Soul', or on 'Whip And Chain', where Jourgensen sets his musings to a backdrop of pounding drums and a furious, Godflesh-like riff, with what sounds like a mobile phone going off in the background.

Jourgensen's lyrics are the usual hotch-potch of nihilist smack philosophy and ill-conceived gibberish. The way it's panned out, Ministry's whole career has been an unwitting exercise in demonstrating the law of diminishing returns: the more you try to shock people, however good you are at it, the less reaction you provoke eventually.

And now, for virtually all of Dark Side's duration, they resemble nothing so much as Marilyn Manson minus the feather boas and make-up. Not a good record.