Flashback (Ministry song)
| The Land of Rape and Honey | ||||
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| Studio album by Ministry | ||||
| Released | October 11, 1988 | |||
| Recorded | 1985 at Southern Studios, London ("Abortive") 1987–1988 at Chicago Trax Studios |
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| Genre | Industrial rock, industrial metal | |||
| Length | 40:24 | |||
| Label |
Sire/Warner Bros. 25799 |
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| Producer | Hypo Luxa, Hermes Pan, Eddie Echo | |||
| Ministry chronology | ||||
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| Singles from The Land of Rape and Honey | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Robert Christgau | B+ |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide |  |
The Land of Rape and Honey is the third studio album by industrial metal band Ministry, released in 1988 on Sire Records. The first in a series of major departures from the bands previous two synthpop and EBM records, the band sought to expand immensely on elements their previous work Twitch had only touched upon. The less commercial, industrial-laced collection of tracks incorporate elements of metal such as fast electric guitar riffs, something that would become commonplace for the band, although only the second/third songs and the remix for "Stigmata"'s video use guitars extensively. With TLoRaH came the inclusion of bassist Paul Barker, who would remain a member of the band until his departure in 2004. It also marked a dramatic shift in vocal cadence, as Al's faux British accent present since With Sympathy was dropped, though it remains (albeit distorted heavily) on the first track.
The resulting sound is often cited as a pioneering work in the industrial metal genre, and is considered by Jourgensen as ostensibly the "first" Ministry album, though he would experiment with this sound prior to its release under different names, such as 1000 Homo DJs.
The album title comes from the slogan of Tisdale, Saskatchewan, whose motto at that time was "The Land of Rape and Honey", the local economy being based on the agricultural products rapeseed and honey. The band chose the name after seeing the slogan on a souvenir mug.
The album cover is an electronically processed image of a burned corpse in the Leipzig-Thekla subcamp of Buchenwald. Jourgensen took a picture of the holocaust from a documentary on television and distorted the image himself. According to Jourgensen, it was originally rejected by the record label but they later changed their mind after Jourgensen presented a head of a roadkilled deer he had found on the road; he cut off the head, put it in his truck, drove from Austin to Los Angeles, went into the Sire Records building, threw the deer on the desk of the head of the art department and said, "here's your new fucking [album] cover."
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Wikipedia