Slow Songs Cut Into Hard-Driving Drama of Ministry Show

Like a dapper Mephistopheles, Ministry’s Al Jourgensen traded in his country antichrist guise for the role of congenial usher Thursday at the Hollywood Palladium, welcoming fans into his furious, hyperkinetic nightmare. Jourgensen was the first real rock star of today’s aggro-industrial craze, a genre whose star face became not Jourgensen, but Trent Reznor.

Thursday he hit the stage hot-wired for high drama, dressed in a jaunty top hat (not his trademark 10-gallon) and calf-length leather coat, brandishing a walking stick and whirling like a dervish, as the band delivered the blistering blitzkrieg dance music of its 1992 techno-metal attack “Psalm 69.” But as the show unfolded, it was the slower, more dirge-like songs from the recent album, “Filth Pig,” that dominated, and the drama largely dissipated.

That musical range illustrated the band’s role in spawning a host of alternative bands with a penchant for terrifying, fractured disco, throbbing electronic wizardry, sledgehammer beats and speed-metal guitar. But it also underscored why Jourgensen--a highly creative studio-maestro--has failed to break through into the mainstream.

By the end of Ministry’s hard-driving and occasionally stultifying show, Jourgensen had lifted himself onto an amp--not to taunt the crowd or bask in his much-deserved glory but simply to sit, relax and wallow in his thrilling arsenal of sound.