2. Rio Grande Blood

Along with Houses Of The Molé and The Last Sucker, Rio Grande Blood completes a trilogy which openly attacks the Bush administration.

Around this record, both the actual corporation of Ministry and my personal taxes went through seven government audits in six years. I had my phones tapped. I was harassed and all that other shit, but it was well worth it. To me, I knew I was doing nothing wrong and I knew there was nothing they could do to me legally, so it was just an inconvenience.

That’s not why I like the record though. The political statements and artwork and symbolism aside, I just think it’s a fucking good song-record. Oddly enough, when you do an album that has a lot of good songs, it never usually gets any notice. But this one got a lot of notice, a couple of Grammy nominations or some shit, some of the songs were used in The Hurt Locker, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. 

So it got all this attention and for once they were spot-on. I like the songs and had a really good time working with two new members of the band, Paul Raven [ex-Killing Joke] and Tommy Victor [of Prong]. It’s just a really good-energy record, which a lot of good things spawned from. I put this number two for musical reasons.