Ministry/Melvins/Corrosion of Conformity
Industrial Strength Tour
Ministry brought their Industrial Strength tour to Riverworks in Buffalo, NY on March 16th, 2021. The tour, like many, had to be rescheduled a couple times due to the pandemic. This version brought the Melvins and Corrosion of Conformity as openers. Both bands have huge followings of their own, similar to Ministry, and the crowd seemed excited to finally be able to see all 3 bands.
Ministry is widely known to be one of the loudest bands live and I must say nothing has changed. They played a solid set, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their 4th studio album, “The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste”. Fans that were lucky enough to catch ‘ The Mind Tour’ quickly noticed that the stage looked eerily familiar. Vocalist and founding member, Al Jourgensen, sounded better than ever. They opened with ‘Breathe’ and played the entire set from behind chain link fencing. Uncle Al, as he is affectionately called, was joined by guitarists, Monte Pittman {Prong} and Cesar Soto, bass player, Paul D’Amour {Tool}, keyboardist, John Bechdel and drummer, Ray Mayorga {Stone Sour}. The band was right on cue at every mark, playing through the setlist without any noticeable issues.
The industrial band drove the crowd into a frenzy with the Black Sabbath cover ‘Supernaut’, which Jourgensen recorded in 1990 with his side project 1000 Homo DJs. Another crowd favorite included ‘NWO‘ off “Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed at Sucking Eggs” album. They through in a few other covers from another Uncle Al side project, Pailhead.
For the encore, before they gave the crowd a taste of their latest release, Moral Hygiene, the 15th studio release, they had the fencing removed. The band then performed 3 songs including the Iggy & the Stooges cover, ‘Search & Destroy‘.
Ministry setlist:
- Breathe
- The Missing
- Deity
- Stigmata
- Supernaut {1000 Homo DJs}
- Don’t Stand in Line {Pailhead}
- Man Should Surrender {Pailhead}
- Burning Inside
- N.W.O
- Just One Fix
- Thieves
- So What
Encore:
- Alert Level
- Good Trouble
- Search & Destroy {Iggy & the Stooges}