MINISTRY
cheLSeA WOLFe
FORUM, LONDON
Industrial warhorses ride the minute hand to midnight
is on fire and the earth is burning. But that’s nothing next to the oppressive heat inside the Forum, where the air hangs heavy with sweat thick enough to drink. It’s the perfect environment for Ministry, a band who have spent the last 30 years stoking the furnaces of chaos. Before Al Jourgensen and his lords of misrule send the mercury through the roof, drone-metal witch queen CHELSEA WOLFE [7] provides a welcome blast of ice-cold air. Lit from behind and looking 13 feet tall, she’s a mesmerising presence, while songs such as Spun and 16 Psyche drift in from the haunted parts of the city. It’s an unlikely pairing, but the perspiring mass in front of her approves.
MINISTRY [8] have always thrived on chaos, and the threat of impending apocalypse – whether via climate change or a moron in the White House – is grist to their turbocharged mill. Tonight, flanked by giant inflatable anti-Nazi Trumpresembling chickens, they sound like the most scabrous, vindictive band on the planet. It starts sluggishly. Twilight Zone, from this year’s AmeriKKKant album, lumbers like a sedated elephant, but things soon click into gear; Victims Of A Clown and Lies Lies Lies sound like civilisations collapsing in on themselves, while Antifa sees a pair of the eponymous anti-fascist movement’s flags hoisted high. But Al knows what everyone’s really here for: Just One Fix, NWO, Thieves, So What – songs written back when both the world and Ministry seemed like they couldn’t get any crazier. Tonight, in the heart of the volcano, it’s clear just how wrong we were.