Houses of the Molé

AMG Review of Houses of the Molé

Johnny Loftus
All Music Guide

Released in 2003, Animositisomina might've brought Ministry back from the dead, but it's Houses of the Molé that fully resurrects everyone's favorite ghoul. Guv-hating Al Jourgensen is back, and he's siphoned the gas from Jesus' hotrod for a new squadron of industro-hrash devil machines. In music and platform, Molé is like a rebroadcast from the year 1992, and that's exactly Jourgensen's point. Hate the new boss, same as the old boss. Where once there was "N.O.W.," there is now "No W," and a new batch of soundbites to paint the Prez as a spooky Orwellian snake trader. Jourgensen's words are a blunt-edged rant. "Ask me why you feel deceived/And stripped of all your liberties/It doesn't take a genius to explain that today." His cynicism is bolted to rabid programmed beats and Mike Scaccia's roaring guitar; in the background nihilism sharpens its teeth with a Rambo knife. In this way Molé carries through nine official tracks. They all start with "W"; they're all stripped of everything but stuttering, unforgiving percussion, tuneless blasts of guitar, and Jourgensen's acid spit. Psalm 69 was a similar screed, but it had arrangements and even some biting sarcasm. There's just corrosion 12 years later, as any levity's scraped, melted, and reshaped into ammunition for a new fight. With Molé, Jourgensen has mobilized the fatalism and fury that always rumbled through industrial and hrash music, and left everything else in the staging area. There are detours, but they're to places no "good" citizens go. "Warp City" teems in its own twisted amorality, while "WTV" is the Ludovico technique turned in on itself, a numbing tumble of media snippets beaming through shards of industrial waste. (The Law & Order drop-in is notable and telling.) "World" breaks the album's relentless thrashing pace, and hopes for a planet "where people aren't afraid," but it's still guided by an undercurrent of pessimism. Instead of empty wishes, Ministry offers buckets of clenching bile. There are no melodies here, no innovation. Creativity has hardened into apathy; it's gone into hiding until the culture war ends. Houses of the Molé isn't really music, it's hard tack -- sustenance for wartime.