Battle of One Man Bands: Ministry vs. Nine Inch Nails

[RetroLounge]

Since Al and Trent do most of the stuff themselves, let them duke it out here.

RL

[CanuckAmok]

1. Ministry kicks ass!

Trent Reznor is a whiny, contrived anti-hero with an incalculable (and unacknowledged) debt to Jim Thirlwell, who pioneeered the angst-industrial sound NIN cahsed in on.

[eyepaddle]

2. Was that the guy from

This Mortal Coil? I'll check after I post this. I gotta say they both rock. NIN is definitely one of the best performances I have ever seen (and they did it twice!) I just never got around to checking out Ministry. Ya gotta Like Al's polittics though.

And Trent proved that no matter who you are--or who you think you are--you can't just vanish for four or five years and not be forgotten.

On edit--oh sorry, he's from Foetus

[CanuckAmok]

7. No, he IS Foetus!

[Wat_Tyler]

9. I always confuse him with Momus.

For some reason.

You've Got Foetus On Your Breath.

[no name no slogan]

11. Thank YOU!!!

I was a total Ministry Head in the late 80s/early 90s, and quite into the whole WaxTrax scene: RevCo, Front242, Lard, etc. In fact, my username is taken from a song by PTP, a Ministry side project with the guys from Cabaret Voltaire.

Then along comes NIN, and all the fucking football players start digging it and getting into that new-fangled "industrial" music. It was such a fucking joke, and still is today.

NIN is to Ministry as Pat Boone is to Little Richard. Trent is a fucking homogenized warmed-over safe-for-the-entire-family version of the twisted sh!t that Al and Paul churn out in their sleep.

[CanuckAmok]

12. Plus, Ministry were the band in the robot destruction carnival in "AI"

And NIN wasn't.

And Al Jourgenson drives a twin-turbo Supra.

[no name no slogan]

13. No kidding?

I haven't seen AI-- maybe I'll have to now!

My most fondest Ministry/RevCo memory is from my sophomore year of college (88-89), when the co-DJ for my college radio show whipped out "You Goddamned Son Of A Bitch" by Revolting Cocks (on vinyl, of course), and slapped it on the turntable.

The broadcast booth was right in the middle of the student union at my small, private, church-affiliated, midwesters liberal arts college, and had some serious wattage on the monitors. Needless to say we had "Union Carbide" on 11 for quite awhile before the complaints shut us down.

Crazy damned college kids...

[On the Road]

3. Ministry is DU's Own

Don't let XNASA see this until Ministry catches up.

[Wat_Tyler]

4. Bah! Ministry would have gotten nowhere were it not for the early members.

Bah!

[jonnyblitz]

5. Ministry. nt

[livinginphotographs]

6. Have to say Nine Inch Nails.

I know Ministry came first, but Nine Inch Nails made industrial music more of a mainstream (and I mean that in a good way) genre, that led a lot of angst-ridden teenagers such as myself to some very good music.

[Beware the Beast Man]

8. Technically, Ministry's a duo.

Unless Paul Barker left recently.

[AntiCoup2K4]

10. Man this is a tough call... but I'm gonna give the edge to Ministry...

...just because the leap from "With Sympathy" to "Twitch" was much farther than the leap from "Pretty Hate Machine" to "Broken".

[RetroLounge]

14. I went with Ministry, although NIN was pretty good

I've seen both. But I've Ministry 4 or 5 times. NIN seemed too calculated. Ministry was truely scary and real.

I met Al in the studio when he was mixing down Every Day is Halloween. His studio time ran over into our and he asked if we would mind letting him have another couple hours. No problem. Got to shake his hand and talk for a bit and watch him work on the fairlight computer and sound board.

I saw them at the Avalon in Milwaukee the first time they came back to town after being banned for throwing a beer bottle at a fan.

Saw them somewhere else in Chicago, but I don't recall where.

But the best was just past the time they dropped the faux-brit synth crap and got real real loud and heavy, and they were doing 2 shows at a pub called McGreeveys in Glenview, IL, just outside of Chicago. The first show was all-ages and I took an underage friend who realy wanted to see them. Al was throwing playing cards at the audience for some reason. I have one. The stage was 6" off the floor, so standing in front I was spat and seat upon and they were loud and obnoxiously heavy and scary and wonderful. I dropped off my friend back in the city and then came back for the late show too. Bliss.

RL