The Land Of Rape And Honey (Album)

***The Land Of Rape And Honey*** is the third studio album by Ministry and is the first to feature Paul Barker, the longest running member of the band besides frontman Al Jourgensen.

## The Land Of Rape And Honey

### Producer

Hypo Luxa (Al Jourgensen), Hermes Pan (Paul Barker), Eddie Echo (Adrian Sherwood)

## Track List

1. "*Stigmata*" (5:45)
2. "*The Missing*" (2:55)
3. "*Deity*" (3:20)
4. "*Golden Dawn*" (5:42)
5. "*Destruction*" (3:30)
6. "*Hizbollah*" (3:58) CD exclusive track
7. "*The Land Of Rape And Honey*" (5:10)
8. "*You Know What You Are*" (4:43)
9. "*I Prefer*" (2:15) CD exclusive track
10. "*Flashback*" (4:50)
11. *"Abortive*" (4:23)

## Overview

### Sound

*The Land Of Rape And Honey* continues in the less commercial direction the band started with Twitch. The album is the first from the band to feature metal influences with the first three tracks featuring distorted guitars prominently along with vocals covered with effects and heavy drums. The album is an early example of the sound Ministry would continue with from this point forward.

### Title/Art

The album title comes from the slogan of Tisdale, Saskatchewan, whose motto at that time was "The Land of Rape and Honey", a reference to the agricultural products rapeseed and honey. The band chose the name after seeing the slogan on a souvenir mug.

The artwork is an electronically processed photo of a burned corpse in the Leipzig-Thekla subcamp of Buchenwald. Jourgensen took a photograph while watching a Holocaust 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 drove from Austin to Los Angeles with the head of a roadkilled deer before he threw the head on the desk of the head of the art department at Sire records and said, "Here's your new fucking [album] cover."

## Recording

Al Jourgensen credits working with Adrian Sherwood on Twitch for giving him the confidence he needed to pursue his own vision, which he followed to an extreme. Despite being what he describes in his memoirs as a "functional addict", Jourgensen would spend hours editing the "snippets of noise" he and the band had recorded, which he stated came to him in his dreams. Inspired by William Burroughs and the cut-up technique he employed in his writings, Jourgensen would mark each beat on the individual rhythm tapes with a grease pencil, cut the tapes on the beats and rearrange them at random. "In a way, it was like musical Russian roulette. I'd listen to [*what I'd put together*] and if it sounded good I'd keep it. If it wasn't right, I'd chop it up again and keep experimenting ... I'd rub some of the pieces of tape in coffee, others had cigarette burns or urine stains."

## Credits

### Ministry

Al Jourgensen – vocals, guitar, programming, production, engineer

Paul Barker – bass, keyboards, programming, production, engineer

### Additional personnel

William Rieflin – drums, programming, keyboards, guitar, background vocals

Chris Connelly – background vocals (2 & 3), lead vocals (9)

Eddie Echo – production (11)

Steve Spapperi – engineer

Julian Herzfeld – engineer

Keith "Fluffy" Auerbach – engineer

"Dog" (Al Jourgensen) – album cover

"Ill" – album cover

Brian Shanley – album cover

1. ↑ Jourgensen & Wiederhorn 2013, p. 83–85.