Wish You Were Here
Wacken. The spiritual home of heavy metal. Located in the heart of Europe, Germany's (and arguably the world's) greatest heavy metal festival runs out of tickets within a week of going on sale nowadays, and for good reason. So what better place to record a live album, and what better time? Recorded in 2012 for their second Wacken appearance, American industrial metal legends Ministry delivered not only a top-notch performance, but also captured long-time guitarist Mike Scaccia at his absolute best before he sadly passed away later that year.
Masters of the industrial heavy metal world, Ministry have been spewing out their barely controllable, anarchic industrial din for thirty two years, with a three-year break the only blotch on their long service record. In a live environment, Ministry's clinical beats become a ravening beast; more organic, more alive, and more intense. This DVD is proof that, after more than three decades of doing what they do best, Al Jourgensen and his cohorts are more than capable of playing one of the top slots at a festival as large, and as prestigious, as Wacken.
A lot of Ministry's older fans may well have stopped listening to their newer material entirely, but for anybody still open to what the band have achieved throughout their entire career, this is an essential purchase. There is a distinct lack of older material on display here (although unsurprising for a show that was part of the tour to support 2012 album Relapse), so anybody hoping for a Ministry best-of show may be disappointed. What this setlist does do however, is reinforce the fact that Ministry have written a lot of great songs over the last decade, and are most certainly not living in the shadow of their success in the late eighties and early nineties.
Opening with new song Ghouldiggers, the Wacken crowd appears lacklustre at first but considering the bad weather that year and the mud-pit conditions, it's somewhat understandable (plus of course this is a festival and not solely a Ministry gig). No W and Rio Grande Blood follow, and the crowd begins to liven up to match the energy on-stage; the huge video screens a constant barrage of mocking political messages and imagery. The massively headbangable LiesLiesLies has the desired effect, with the majority of the crowd now doing just that. Waiting gives Mike the chance to show off his shredding skills, and by the time his moment comes on the title track to Relapse he's grinning away, clearly in his element.
The crowd interaction is minimal, but when Al announces that he thinks the crowd are tired of the new songs and it's time for one, "from nineteen hundred and eighty-eight", the roar of approval is audible. We're then treated to a trio of Ministry classics in NWO, Just One Fix and Thieves; a fitting end to a brilliantly tight-yet-organic performance, something especially good to see from a band who are so clinical (as is the nature of their beast) on record.
The bonus disc contains their entire debut Wacken performance from 2006, which sadly lacks the audio and video quality of the main article, looking and sounding more like a dodgy bootleg than any kind of official release. It's a shame the recording doesn't do this particular set the justice it deserves, but it doesn't detract too much from the release of a career-defining 2012 show that will go down in Wacken's hall of fame, not to mention that of the entire world of heavy metal.