Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	75/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
The Austin Chronicle
Billboard	favourable
Playlouder
Q
Rock Hard	10/10
Rolling Stone

Houses of the Molé is the ninth studio album by industrial metal band Ministry. The album was released on June 21, 2004, internationally, and a day later in the United States, through Sanctuary Records.

It is noteworthy for being the first Ministry LP not to feature bassist and longtime collaborator Paul Barker since Twitch in 1986. It is also the first album to use Ministry's new logo, as well as their first with Mike Scaccia on guitar since 1996's Filth Pig.

The album is the first part of the band's anti-Bush trilogy, followed by Rio Grande Blood (2006) and The Last Sucker (2007). It was released in the run up to the 2004 American presidential elections, with George W. Bush being president at the time of its release. Nearly all songs start with the letter "W" in their title, except for "No W" and the hidden track "Psalm 23". The first track on the album, "No W", features numerous satirical samples of Bush's speeches, particularly samples in which he spoke of his war on terror. Compared to its subsequent follow-ups, the musical style of the album is more thrash metal-oriented.

Jourgensen describes Houses of the Molé as a "rebirth" album as he started Ministry anew without long time collaborator Paul Barker who left after the Animositisomina tour due to a falling out. In his autobiography, Jourgensen describes that he wrote "Walrus" as a way to "celebrate" Barker's departure. In it, it has the words "Paul is no longer with us" played backwards on repeat.

Jourgensen has stated that the name Houses of the Molé is a tribute to the Houses of the Holy album, released by Led Zeppelin in 1973. Mole itself is a Mexican sauce made from chocolate that is nearly black in color, an image that Jourgensen believes represents crude oil.

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Wikipedia