Ministry: With Sympathy [MUSIC ON VINYL]

Why you'll love it

Music On Vinyl presses Ministry's debut on 180g vinyl. With Sympathy reached No. 94 on the Billboard 200 and sold more than 100,000 copies in the US, and Rolling Stone praised its catchy dance songs.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Long before the guitars and the industrial thunder, Ministry was a Chicago synth band with a drum machine and a very good ear for a dance-floor hook. Al Jourgensen started the project in his apartment in late 1981 with an ARP Omni synthesizer and a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and a demo caught the ear of Wax Trax! co-founder Jim Nash.

After the single "Cold Life" did well on the road, Arista signed the band, and With Sympathy was recorded in the autumn of 1982 at Syncro Sound in Boston with producers Vince Ely and Ian Taylor. Jourgensen sings with real fire over gleaming synths and Stephen George's drums. "Effigy" opens the record in style, "Revenge" got its own video, "I Wanted to Tell Her" is a sleek new wave single, and "Work for Love" is pure 1983 club pop.

Jourgensen has since made his peace with the album, and in 2023 Ministry played "Revenge" live for the first time since 1984, then brought "Effigy" and "Work for Love" back to the stage too. He also sang the whole thing in an English accent, which as a Toronto shop we consider a perfectly sensible career move.

Also at Kops: more Ministry on vinyl · browse Industrial & Goth

Tracklist

Listen

On Arista / Music On Vinyl (cat# MOVLP1512), a reissue of the 1983 album.