I remember the days when a brooding Trent Reznor and a dreadlocked Rob Zombie were still nobodies. With a smart ass attitude, rock star charisma, and attire that made him look like a Mad Hatter meets Road Warrior extra, back then the only real industrial-metal god frontman was Al Jourgensen. To this day, Reznor's the guy most likely to cry on your shoulder. Zombie is the guy most likely to make fun of you unless you've seen The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. And, Jourgensen's the guy most likely to get you drunk and leave you reeking of perfume and gasoline blacked out on the side of a desert highway with a Philippino stick fighter.

Heck, there wasn't even the word "Industrial" or "Alternative" when I first began listening to Ministry. I wouldn't consider myself a huge fan, but back when you're young, and dumb, and hormonal everyone needs something a little hard edged and dark to listen to when they've had a bad day, and Ministry often fit the bill. To this day, "Thieves" and "Stigmata" were probably the only metal-ish guitar riffs I ever learned. Back when I was a casual fan, I three different opportunities to see them live (in those days of youth when you always went to a live show with friends- never alone) and all three times for whatever reason I passed it up. I still distinctly remember asking one friend who went how their live show was. He looked at me and said "Well, they came out..." then he kind of shrugged, "...and they played". Which I took to mean, it was no big deal.

Still, having missed the band before, I was interested in seeing their live 1996 concert video Sphinctour. Having see it I can now safely say that Ministry's live performance is...

Well, they came out... and they played.

There really isn't much to the show other than they come out and play. Sure Jourgensen does the dark brooding 'eyes roll to the back of his head' thing, gives the audience a hard drink, but in terms of stage show, they pretty much come out and play, with your average color filtered and strobe lights going on and off, and a little backdrop/video show. Although the songs are taken from one specific live performance, the visual material is edited form various performances, so you watch band member clothes change during the songs- Jourgensen goes from cowboy hat, to tophat, to toboggan through the course of a song. There is little backstage material, that is usually incidental, a quick buffer between songs, like one segment that involves Jourgensen yelling at a band member who is in the bathroom. So, its basically a fan-only affair. If you like the songs, good, cause' thats really all you are going to get. And industrial music presents a problem live, and that is, there isn't much room for improvisation, changing the songs up, and so far as I could tell, the songs were just as I remembered them with little/no variation.

The footage is compiled form various performances as the band globe trotted around the world and US. You get performances from Paris, Stuttgart, New York, London, Hamburg, Seattle, Venice, San Francisco, Chicago, Brussels, Los Angeles, Toronto, and of course Albuquerque. The songs played are:

* from the album "The Land of Rape and Honey"/ ** from the album "The Mind is a terrible Thing to Taste"/ ***from the album "Psalm 69: The Way To Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs"/ **** from the album "Filth Pig"

As far as the DVD itself, when I first loaded it, I looked at the main menu and screamed "Oh my God, I'm going blind!" because I couldn't read any of the words clearly. Everything on the screen was in a haze. I then looked around my room and after easily focusing my eyes on my Bruce Lee statue I keep on my bookshelf, I realized I wasn't going blind, but that in order to remain dark and industrial, the menu on the Ministry DVD was blurry and nearly illegible. That's really cool and all, but it'll make you think you spontaneously developed severe cataracts.

Sound- Either a Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 track or a 5.1 track. The sound is pretty good. In the 5-6 years since the tour there have been all sorts of improvements in terms of sound recording, so its always interesting when these industrial bands, formerly the cutting edge, sound dated and old. But as it is, the recording is pretty good, all the instrumentation comes through clear, or purposely muddled/heavily filtered like Jourgensen's voice, which just like on the albums, often floats just below the instrumentation..

Picture- The picture is basically just high grade video. color is fine, a little bit of bleed because of the heavy stage lights, and there is graininess, which is the result of low light and its intentional, goes with the music. Its is almost always a tight claustrophobic close up shot of band members, or the audience (sometimes from the mosh pit), and mainly Jourgensen singing. Technically its pretty dull, but it gets the job done. Maybe a nice thing to play in the backgound at your next depressive S&M party.

Extras- A Gallery of press/backstage passes and a few promo concert posters. DVD Credits.

Conclusion- Well, die-hard Ministry fans will want to buy it. Casual/past fans, like I am, should note there isn't a whole lot going on in terms of extras, song variation, or backstage material, so it wont get much play. When it comes to band live DVDs you can get something packed with extras and backstage material/interviews, something obtuse (like Radiohead's "Meeting People is Easy"), or something pretty basic, like "Sphinctour".