Cover Up [Digipak] (CD - 2008)

Ministry front man Al Jourgensen has a history of covers dating back to 1990, when he gleefully obliterated Olivia Newton-John's "(Let's Get) Physical" with side project the Revolting Cocks. The origins of the all-covers COVER UP can be traced to Jourgensen's faithful run through Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" on Ministry's 1995 album FILTH PIG, reproduced here: Jourgensen's obvious affection for the source material shines through the myriad layers of distortion, to disarming affect. COVER UP, then, is concerned not with deconstruction but reconstruction, as on the Grammy-nominated "Under My Thumb": the song succeeds because Jourgensen meticulously rebuilds it using his own sonic palette (i.e. industrial muck). If, as Jourgensen has promised, COVER UP is his swansong with Ministry, it's strangely appropriate: believers get a revealing peek into the back pages of one of rock music's most defiantly enigmatic masterminds. minimize