Ministry’s ‘From Beer to Eternity’ turns 13 on 6 September
Ministry released “From Beer to Eternity” on 6 September 2013 through 13th Planet Records, produced by Al Jourgensen and Sammy D’Ambruoso.
Ministry released its thirteenth studio album, “From Beer to Eternity”, on 6 September 2013 through 13th Planet Records. The album turns 13 this year. Al Jourgensen produced it with Sammy D’Ambruoso, recording between December 2012 and March 2013 at Jourgensen’s 13th Planet compound in El Paso, Texas. Dave Donnelly handled mastering.
Jourgensen had said this would be Ministry’s final album, a plan later reversed with 2018’s “AmeriKKKant”. The sessions carried added weight: guitarist Mike Scaccia, whom Jourgensen described as the record’s driving force, died of a sudden heart attack three days after finishing his parts, while playing onstage with his other band, Rigor Mortis. Jourgensen and D’Ambruoso spent three months finishing the album afterward. Jourgensen recalled the tracking sessions themselves as smooth: “We have never, in the history of Ministry, ever had a tracking session like that before. Everything went so smoothly, it was surreal.”
What is on Ministry’s ‘From Beer to Eternity’
The standard edition runs 11 tracks and 54:43: “Hail to His Majesty (Peasants)”, “Punch in the Face”, “PermaWar”, “Perfect Storm”, “Fairly Unbalanced”, “The Horror”, “Side F/X Include Mikey’s Middle Finger (TV4)”, “Lesson Unlearned”, “Thanx but No Thanx”, “Change of Luck” and “Enjoy the Quiet”. A Best Buy deluxe edition added “PermaWar Remix” and “Thanks for the Dub Remix”; the LP edition added a “Punch in the Face Remix”. “Thanx but No Thanx” sets William S. Burroughs’s poem “A Thanksgiving Prayer” to music, read by Sgt. Major, who had appeared on Ministry’s 2006 album “Rio Grande Blood”.
Jourgensen sang and played guitar, keyboards and harmonica across the record. Scaccia and Sin Quirin played guitars, Tony Campos played bass on several tracks, and Aaron Rossi played drums. D’Ambruoso handled drum programming, synthesizer programming and co-production, and Aaron Havill contributed theremin, synthesizer and additional engineering. “PermaWar” served as the sole single, released through the iTunes Store on 9 August 2013.
The cover art, by photographer Allan Amato, depicted seven models styled as sexualized, monster-like personifications of the seven deadly sins. It drew mockery from The A.V. Club’s Josh Modell, who compared it to Spinal Tap’s fictional “Smell the Glove” cover; Ministry responded with an alternate cover titled “Whole Lotta Glove” as a joke. “From Beer to Eternity” was also the first Ministry album since 2004’s “Houses of the Molé” without Tommy Victor on guitar or bass. The album reached number 140 on the Billboard 200 and number 7 on Billboard’s Hard Rock Albums chart. A remix companion, “From Beer to Eternamix”, followed on 22 November 2015.
About Ministry
Ministry formed in Chicago in 1981 around Al Jourgensen, mixing synth-pop on the 1983 debut “With Sympathy” before Jourgensen redirected the project toward the harder industrial sound that defined the band from “Twitch” (1986) onward. “The Land of Rape and Honey” (1988) and “The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste” (1989) established the template of sampled vocals, distorted guitars and programmed rhythm that ran through the band’s most widely covered period, “Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs” (1992), which included the singles “N.W.O.” and “Jesus Built My Hotrod”.
Jourgensen kept Ministry active through a long run of collaborators across the 1990s and 2000s, including “Filth Pig” (1996), “Dark Side of the Spoon” (1999), and a politically charged trilogy opened by “Houses of the Molé” (2004) and closed by “The Last Sucker” (2007), after which Jourgensen first announced the band’s retirement. He revived Ministry for “Relapse” (2012) and, after “From Beer to Eternity” in 2013, again for “AmeriKKKant” (2018), “Amerikkkant” follow-up “Moral Hygiene” (2021), and “HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES” (2021).
Thirteen years on, Scaccia’s contributions to “From Beer to Eternity” remain the guitarist’s last studio recordings with the band he had rejoined multiple times since first playing on 1989’s “The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste”.
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