On a rather pleasant Monday night what better way to pass the evening than with friends, rockers, metallers, and Ministry with support from Chelsea Wolfe? And indeed the Limelight played host to such a gathering.
The place soon started to fill up as people filed in to the dark cooler climes of the Limelight One stage and it wasn’t long before the morbidly mystical Chelsea Wolfe appeared on stage with her band. The whole set was dark. Really dark. And whilst this can be a bit distracting as it makes it difficult to see a band, in this case with well timed strobing, swirling search light and flashing sets of purple, blue, white and red hues it fit Chelsea perfectly. She was a dark forboding goddess of the underworld as she looked like a fallen demon but sang like a celestial angel. Her set included “Carrion Flowers”, “Spun”, “Vex” and “Demons”.
Each song as slow as the next, dirge-like and in time to a funeral procession but the vocals were hauntingly beautiful whilst the guitars and drums pumped out solid grooves to usher you past Charos with a suitable heavy and thunderous procession. It was a spellbinding set.
After a little break Ministry began their call to their acolytes as the large video played the intro “I Know Words” in the background. And to the great Trump tagline of “Lets Make America Great Again” suitably warping as it slowed and tapered off to the end Ministry smashed everyone’s eardrums from the very start with “Twilight Zone”. On into “Victims of a Clown”, “TV5/4Chan”, “Punch in the Face”, and “Señor Peligro”. It is no exaggeration to say that Ministry, for being so long in the tooth (Ministry have been on the go since 1981), could show quite a few much younger bands how to give it your all. Al Jourgensen is still and incredibly powerful, passionate and loud industrial anarchist and what an incredible show the whole band were putting on.
The evening with Ministry was unrelenting as they unleashed “Rio Grande Blood”, “Lies Lies Lies”, “We’re Tired of It”, and “Wargasm”. The pure wall of heavy industrial metal noise was remorseless and unforgiving. The packed Limelight was heaving with a metal induced frenzy and a led to plenty of moshing. Without a let up on the metal train kept a rolling with “Antifa”, “Just One Fix”, “N.W.O. (New World Order)”, and “Thieves” with “So What” rounding of the main set. Of course they did an encore! And hit it out of Belfast with “Psalm 69” and “Bad Blood”.
Ministry were full on, brutal, relentless, repentless and unrelenting in their set and sound. Every single song was full of heavy girders of metal with an industrial groove. An unbelievable performance and what a night!
It was an absolute pleasure to be able to see Ministry deliver each and every passionately struck hammer blow of energetic metal. Everyone was exhausted physically and emotionally by the end. Catharsis via blisteringly delivered very loud industrialised metal. You really need to see Ministry if you can.
Review by Happy Metal Geek
