Truth being told I haven't listened to anything new by Ministry in since 1994's “Filth Pig”. “Pig” was an OK effort, but in the dark light of their killer no filler catalog of albums like “Twitch”, “Land Of Rape And Honey”, “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste”, and “Psalm 69/Elements” it really paled in comparison. So needless to say I was pretty stoked to see what Grandpa Al Jorgensen and crew were up to on this latest live release.

Back in 2011 Ministry announced that they were reforming and playing the Wacken Open Air Fest in 2012, of which this set encapsulates, and as a bonus CD their 2006 appearance (also included on a DVD) at Wacken as well. And let me tell you they never sounded better live in my opinion, Al and company still kick major ass and take no prisoners. The addition of Tommy Victor (from one of my favorite bands Prong), in the 2006 touring lineup is a welcome one. The Wacken 2012 show serves like kind of a cool posthumous memorial saluting the talents of guitarist Mike Scaccia who died of a heart attack on stage with his other band Rigor Mortis in 2012, only scant months after the fest. Sad days indeed. The band sounds fucking killer doing new numbers like ‘99 Percenters’ and ‘Relapse’. But ‘N.W.O’, ‘Just One Fix’ and ‘Thieves’ stand out as my personal favorites. I wish they would have done more "classics" like ‘So What’, ‘Flashback’, ‘Stigmata’ and the like.

The drawbacks of this set is several songs are repeated for both shows, the differences being ‘Ghoul Diggers’, ’99 Percenters’, ‘Wrong’, ‘Worthless’, ‘Khyber Pass’, ‘Life Is Good’, ‘Senor Peligro’, and ‘Fear Is Big Business’. A different show/festival would have made this a solid 10 set. Also, odd is that they didn't do ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’, which was somewhat of a industrial metal 'hit' for them, but I digress. I guess maybe without Gibby Haynes laying down the amphetamine, bourbon and cigarette drenched vocals it might have not worked out as well live.

The DVD's respectively are really good too, shot pretty well also. You get the feel like you are part of the Wacken crowd having a great fucking time at an open air Metalfest. Makes you wish they did big fest shows like this in the States.

The one disc I was truly disappointed in was the 2006 one. Not in the bands performance mind you, but the soundboard production was muddy as fuck and really drowns out the power of a song like ‘Psalm 69’ and its many cool automated sound bytes. ‘Psalm 69’ is one cut on this disc which the muddiness is seriously noticeable on. I really think they should have cleaned it up a bit more post production. All in all though it's a pretty good live time capsule of a band that still has a lot more to offer, it may not be really a good fit for the casual Ministry listener but for a completest fan it’s a industrial strength sweat soaked angsty mosh pit wet dream come true.