1. The Land Of Rape And Honey
Ministry’s third studio album is credited for having a seminal influence on industrial music, though Jourgensen sets no store by the praise. "I don’t give a fuck," he says. "It all boils down to what you think about yourself and your art, not what anyone else says."
What I was doing just hadn’t been done before. That’s why The Land Of Rape And Honey is top of my list. You’ve got to remember, technology back then was way different, and some of these songs were written in 1981 but didn’t come out until 1988. The tape-editing technique, the splice ‘n’ dice, wasn’t really being used in the way I decided to try and use it.
My inspiration came from cut-up artists in the audio world like Toussaint, say, or William S. Burroughs doing word cut-ups. And collage art, too. I still make visual collages just for my own satisfaction. I couldn’t draw a decent stick figure if I was forced to at gunpoint but I can still make art by doing collages.
Everyone reads into the title like there’s an underlying premise, but we were touring Canada and wound up in a place named Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Just some truck stop. We weren’t even playing there. The one coffee mug on our bus had broken when the driver hit the brakes, so I went in and bought a new one. It had a picture of a little bee and a bundle of wheat, and it said "Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: The Land Of Rape And Honey".
