Legendary punk frontman Jello Biafra met up with industrial pioneers Ministry for a performance of the title track “Land of Rape and Honey,” off the 1989 album of the same name. This performance took place on April 22, 2019 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, CA during Ministry’s recent stint of US tours.
Biafra, a Bay Area native who launched his career in the late 70s by fronting the hardcore punk pioneers the Dead Kennedy’s, joined Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen for the vocal performance. The Land of Rape and Honey is Ministry’s most popular album, which helped place industrial music into the mainstream, prior to the popularity of other pioneering artists such as Nine Inch Nails.
Both Biafra and Jourgensen are part of Lard together, who have released a series of albums and EP’s going back all the way to 1989. Although the band have been on hiatus in 200, Jourgensen broke major news for the group, stating that he may release a new Ministry album and Lard song in 2018.
“I don’t know how long the Ministry album will take because we might get sidetracked, we might do side projects with Revolting Cocks or Lard,” Jourgensen explained in an interview with the PRP. “My neighbor right down the street is Gary Numan, so we may hook up together on some stuff. ”
Despite this, Jourgensen also revealed that he would be working back in the studio once again, which was slated to be toward the beginning of this year. In a recent interview toward late 2018, he stated that the album would be “far more Portishead than Motorhead,” meaning that the band may go back to their synth pop and electronica roots found of their first two records With Sympathy and Twitch.
“When I go back, we’ll go right into production on a new Ministry record and just record for like the next six months, very similar to what we did for Rape And Honey, and just record a bunch,” Jourgensen explained in the PRP interview.
He stated that despite this electronic influence and backing, that the album will still host a dark tone underneath, as well as serving as a large political statement. Despite the new record being influenced by the current state of American politics, Jourgensen has avoided calling the album a strictly, “anti-Trump record.”
“The last album was not an anti-Trump album, it was like the “how we got here” album. It kind of touched on what I was talking about with the [self-titled Surgical Meth Machine] album, how society has changed so drastically since social media because ubiquitous,” Jourgensen explained. “And in a Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker kind of way, examining the ramifications and permutations of what that entails. Trump is the perfect byproduct of the society we’ve created…”
Jourgensen, unlike his fellow Lard member Jello Biafra, who had a highly acrimonious split with the Dead Kennedy’s in the late 80s, has recently made amends with former bandmate Paul Barker. He has also stated that his interest to collaborate with Barker in the future.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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