How Ministry’s ‘No W’ became a sequel to ‘NWO’
In the Western political narrative, the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War was a moment of global rejoicing, a triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy celebrated by those in the ‘free world’ and eagerly embraced by a formerly oppressed Eastern Europe starved of the wonders of the free market. History, however, is written by the victors, and the global loss of communism’s counterweight has provided unfettered wealth extraction as the neoliberal death spiral lurches on and an American imperial machine imposes its hegemonic will on the world.
While the Scorpions were whistling ‘Winds of Change’ and David Hasselhoff graced the crumbling Berlin Wall in his light-up jacket, some could see the anxieties of a new, unipolar world from a mile off. Toward the end of George HW Bush’s presidency, the industrial metal mob Ministry penned their defining single. They took a square aim at the administration’s response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the accelerated international CIA game-playing in their new global playground—the then-Iraqi leader and military aggressor Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with the Americans across the 1980s.
Fuelled by the new dawn of uncertainty, the Rodney King riots that tore through Los Angeles, and warped samples of Apocalypse Now and one of Bush’s Congressional joint session speeches laying out his NeoCon vision of the future, band members Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker sprung to action. They conjured a thunderously apocalyptic high-speed juggernaut of pummelling drum machine muscle and earth-shattering mechanised guitar attack, all fronted by Jourgensen’s electronically corroded vocal snarl.
Dropped as the second single to 1992’s Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs—or ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ to give its official title—’NWO’ has endured as one of the decade’s most fiercely pertinent songs as the history it presciently explored played out.
As the 1990s rolled along, two fantastic but overlooked albums were dropped amid a mire of heroin abuse and fracturing band unity. Shortly after the release of 2003’s lacklustre Animositisomina, longtime creative partner Barker officially tapped out, leaving Jourgensen to figure out Ministry’s next steps.
Looking toward the government of the day for renewed fuel in the Ministry flamethrower, the War on Terror and Bush’s son George ‘Dubya’s’ 2004 upcoming second term election triggered Ministry’s biggest rebirth since abandoning synthpop for 1985’s hard-edged Twitch EBM. They dropped a whole trilogy of speed metal-focussed albums dedicated to excoriating Bush Jr’s administration, starting with that year’s Houses of the Molé.
The sole single for the Bush Trilogy’s first entry was ‘No W’, a spiritual successor to ‘NWO’, hurtling down the same propulsive guitar attack, demonic howl, and slathering of chopped and screwed Bushisms. With early album editions featuring Carl Orff’s ‘O Fortuna’, ‘No W’ is spiked with an extra dose of Wagnerian bombast, capturing the cartoon patriotism of the day while scored like the PA loudspeakers booming out Col Kilgore’s airborne Vietnam raid. Leaping out the speakers like a shot of adrenaline, ‘No W’ fired on all cylinders and struck a defiant comeback to a metal world that had long been let down by nu-metal silliness.
Entering a second creative lull in the doldrums of Obama’s corporate Democrat stagnation, the remobilised Right’s entry to the White House under Donald Trump triggered another jolt of vitality for 2018’s AmeriKKKant, their best effort in years. With Trump’s second term ruthlessly enmeshing the country’s Executive with the capital class, coupled with Barker’s return to the studio with Jourgensen, Ministry’s 17th LP could be their most savage yet. Here’s hoping!
