The Land of Rape and Honey

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the 1988 album by Ministry. For the city formerly with this civic motto, see Tisdale, Saskatchewan.
The Land of Rape and Honey
Chicago, Illinois
Genre
Length46:31
LabelSire
Producer
Ministry chronology
Twelve Inch Singles (1981–1984)
(1987) 		The Land of Rape and Honey
(1988) 		The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste
(1989)
Singles from The Land of Rape and Honey
  1. "Stigmata"
    Released: August 1988
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
[5]
Kerrang![6]
MusicHound Rock[7]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[8]
Spin Alternative Record Guide8/10[9]
The Village VoiceB+[10]

The Land of Rape and Honey is the third

RIAA
in January 1996.

The album title comes from the slogan of Tisdale, Saskatchewan, whose motto at that time was "The Land of Rape and Honey",[11] a reference to the agricultural products rapeseed and honey.[12] The band chose the name after seeing the slogan on a souvenir mug.[13]

Background

Jourgensen credited his work with Adrian Sherwood on the preceding album, Twitch, for giving him confidence in his vision and showing him new techniques, which he said he pushed to an extreme.[14] Jourgensen had experimented with a heavier, industrial sound starting in the mid-1980s with singles such as "No Devotion" from the Revolting Cocks' Big Sexy Land and "All Day" from Twitch.[15] When RevCo's next single was more commercial, Sire proposed doing the same for the new Ministry album, but Jourgensen threatened to disband Ministry.[16] Continuing in this less-commercial, industrial-laced direction, Land of Rape and Honey incorporates elements of heavy metal such as fast electric guitar riffs, although only the album's first three songs use guitars extensively.[4] "Stigmata" does not feature live guitars; the two chord riff, altered with a pitch shifter, was sampled.[17] Jourgensen had written some of the songs prior to working on Twitch and said this was the sound he originally wanted for the band.[18]

In his memoirs, Jourgensen described himself at the time as a "functional addict" who scheduled his life around his dealer's availability. Despite this, he spent hours editing tapes of music the band had recorded; Jourgensen described them as "snippets of noise" that came to him in dreams. Inspired by

William Burroughs and the cut-up technique, Jourgensen cut up the tapes and spliced them back together randomly until he liked the end result.[19] Jourgensen wrote "Stigmata" at the last minute after realizing he needed another song to complete the album.[17]

A post made on

Lead Into Gold and "Apathy" for 1000 Homo DJs
.

Artwork

The album cover is an electronically processed image of a burned corpse in the Leipzig-Thekla subcamp of

Holocaust documentary on television and distorted the image himself. According to Jourgensen, it was originally rejected by the record label, but they later changed their mind after Jourgensen cut off the head of a roadkilled deer, put it in his truck, drove from Austin to Los Angeles, went into the Sire Records building, threw the head on the desk of the head of the art department and said, "Here's your new fucking [album] cover."[17]

Additional inner sleeve photography features a 1945 archival film footage of corpses of the

Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp lying in a hillside mass grave in Nordhausen, Germany
.

Legacy

The album was certified

RIAA in January 1996[22] and was re-issued by Wounded Bird Records in 2007.[23]

Richard Stanley's 1990 science fiction thriller Hardware, although the band shown performing the track is Gwar.[29] Marilyn Manson performed a cover on the soundtrack of the film Atomic Blonde.[30]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Al Jourgensen except where noted [31]

No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Stigmata" 5:45
2."The Missing" 2:55
3."Deity" 3:20
4."Golden Dawn"Jourgensen, Barker5:42
5."Destruction"Jourgensen, Barker3:30
6."Hizbollah" (CD bonus track) 3:58
7."The Land of Rape and Honey"Jourgensen, Barker5:10
8."You Know What You Are"Jourgensen, Barker4:43
9."I Prefer" (CD bonus track) 2:15
10."Flashback" 4:50
11."Abortive"Adrian Sherwood4:23

Samples

  2. "Golden Dawn"
  4. "Hizbollah"
  6. "The Land of Rape and Honey"
    • "Sieg..." "...Heil!" [chanting] -
      white power skinheads as the band's support for Nazism. Jourgensen said the band jumped into the crowd and fought the skinheads, but rumors persisted that the band was fascist.[35]
  8. "You Know What You Are"
  10. "Flashback"
    • "Now hold up, man!" "Do it," "Everybody's got to die sometime," "I'm hurtin' real bad inside" - Platoon
  11. "Abortive"
    • "T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4; we've got the main engine start—we have main...", "America's first space shuttle!" "And the shuttle has cleared the tower." - NASA

Personnel

Ministry

Additional personnel

  • William Rieflin
    – drums, programming, keyboards, guitar, background vocals
  • Chris Connelly – background vocals (2 & 3)
  • Eddie Echo – production (11)
  • Steve Spapperi – engineer
  • Julian Herzfeld – engineer
  • Keith "Fluffy" Auerbach – engineer
  • "Dog" (a pseudonym of Al Jourgensen) – album cover
  • "Ill" – album cover
  • Brian Shanley – album cover

Chart positions

Chart (1988) Peak
position
US Billboard 200[36] 164

References

  1. ^ Hartmann, Graham (January 10, 2019). "10 Most Underrated Bands of 1980s". Loudwire. Retrieved March 1, 2020.
  2. ^ Carr, Daphne (June 17, 2019). "33 Best Industrial Albums of All Time". Pitchfork. Retrieved March 1, 2020.
  3. ISBN 978-0-380-81127-4
    .
  4. ^ a b Huey, Steve. "The Land of Rape and Honey - Ministry". AllMusic. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
  5. ISBN 1561592374 – via the Internet Archive
    .
  6. EMAP
    . p. 18.
  7. ISBN 978-1-57859-061-2
    – via the Internet Archive.
  8. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8. Retrieved November 1, 2017 – via Internet Archive
    .
  9. ISBN 0-679-75574-8
    .
  10. ^ Christgau, Robert (September 5, 1989). "Consumer Guide". The Village Voice. Retrieved 2024-01-18 – via robertchristgau.com.
  11. ^ "Canola, golden beads"
  12. ^ Wolanski, Coreen (March 1, 2003). "Ministry - Nothing Exceeds Like Excess". Exclaim!. Retrieved December 4, 2017.
  13. ^ Wiederhorn, Jon (October 11, 2018). "Ministry's 'The Land of Rape and Honey': 8 Insane Al Jourgensen Stories". Revolver Magazine. Project M Group LLC. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
  14. ISBN 9781480329768
    .
  15. ISBN 978-0-19-983258-3
    .
  16. ISBN 0-87930-607-6
    .
  17. ^ a b c d Jourgensen & Wiederhorn 2013, p. 86.
  18. ^ Jourgensen & Wiederhorn 2013, p. 84.
  19. ^ Jourgensen & Wiederhorn 2013, p. 83–85.
  20. ^ "Wax Trax! Records on Instagram". Instagram. Archived from the original on 2021-12-24. Retrieved May 16, 2021.
  21. ^ Ross, Carella. "The original photo used on Ministry's Land of Rape & Honey album cover (and the story behind it)". carellaross.com. Retrieved 7 November 2022.
  22. ^ "Gold & Platinum Search "Ministry"". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved October 31, 2021.
  23. ^ "Ministry – The Land Of Rape And Honey". Discogs. Retrieved 31 March 2024.
  24. ISBN 978-0-7611-3963-8
    .
  25. ^ Chillingworth, Alec. "Every Ministry album, ranked from worst to best". TeamRock. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  26. ^ Heller, Jason (August 3, 2014). "Where to start with the harsh, mechanized beat of industrial". The A.V. Club. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
  27. ^ Acharya, Kiran. "Revolting Lots: Al Jourgensen's Favourite Ministry Albums". The Quietus. Retrieved June 7, 2016.
  28. ^ Stingley, Mick (October 11, 2018). "Ministry's Al Jourgensen on Turning 60, 30th Anniversary of 'The Land of Rape and Honey'". Billboard. Retrieved May 16, 2021.
  29. ISBN 978-1-349-54571-1
    .
  30. ^ "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Atomic Blonde". AllMusic.
  31. ^ BMI. "BMI Repertoire". BMI. Retrieved 10 April 2018.
  32. ^ a b Murphy, Tom (June 12, 2012). "Ministry's Al Jourgensen on his ties to Colorado: living in Breckenridge, attending Greeley High School and his ill-fated attempt at a rodeo career". Westword. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
  33. ^ "10 Evil Rock + Metal Songs Inspired by Aleister Crowley". Loudwire. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
  34. ISBN 978-0-19-983258-3
    .
  35. ^ Strauss, Neil (April 11, 1996). "The Pop Life". The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
  36. ^ "Ministry Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved October 31, 2021.

Bibliography

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Land_of_Rape_and_Honey&oldid=1216557577"