The Land of Rape and Honey

The Land of Rape and Honey is the third studio album by American rock band Ministry, released on October 11, 1988 by Sire Records. The album was a departure from the band's previous two synthpop and EBM records, expanding on several elements introduced in their preceding work Twitch. The less-commercial, industrial-laced collection of tracks incorporates elements of metal such as fast electric guitar riffs, although only the album's first three songs use guitars extensively.

This was the first Ministry album to include bassist Paul Barker, who would remain a member until his departure in 2004. It also marked a shift in vocal cadence, as Al Jourgensen's faux British accent present since With Sympathy was dropped, though it remains (albeit distorted heavily) on the first track. The resulting sound is often cited as a pioneering work in the industrial metal genre, and is considered by Jourgensen as ostensibly the "first true" Ministry album, though he would experiment with this sound prior to its release under different names, such as 1000 Homo DJs. The album title comes from the slogan of Tisdale, Saskatchewan, whose motto at that time was "The Land of Rape and Honey", the local economy being based on the agricultural products rapeseed and honey. The band chose the name after seeing the slogan on a souvenir mug.

The track "Stigmata" is featured in Richard Stanley's 1990 science fiction thriller Hardware, although the band shown performing the track is actually Gwar. In his autobiography, Jourgensen said that "Stigmata" is his least favorite song in the Ministry catalogue for its simplistic songwriting. The song does not have any actual guitars on it; the two chord riff, altered with a pitch shifter, was sampled. He wrote "Stigmata" at the last minute after realizing he needed another song to complete the album.

The album was certified Gold by the RIAA in January 1996. The album was out of print for a few years in the early 2000s, but was re-issued by Wounded Bird Records in 2007. This re-issue is misprinted, labeling the title track "The Land of Milk and Honey."

In 2016, Al Jourgensen cited The Land of Rape and Honey as his favorite Ministry album. He added that he was inspired to create "word cut-ups" from the works of Allen Toussaint and William S. Burroughs. Bands like Fear Factory, Linkin Park, Slipknot and Nine Inch Nails cite this album as major influence.

Package
The album cover is an electronically processed image 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 presented a head of a roadkilled deer he had found on the road; he cut off the head, put it in his truck, drove from Austin to Los Angeles, went into the Sire Records building, threw the deer on the desk of the head of the art department and said, "Here's your new fucking [album] cover."

Track listing

 * Tracks 6 and 9 were bonus tracks on the CD release of the album.

Samples

 * 1) "Golden Dawn"
 * 2) *"You are being found guilty of covenants with the devil," "State your confession," "Confess! Confess!" "The Anti-Christ" - The Devils
 * 3) *[chanting] - Aleister Crowley, from his "Call of the First Aethyr"
 * 4) *[chanting] - Israel Regardie, quoting the English translation of the First Enochian Key.
 * 5) "Hizbollah"
 * 6) *"Kad Ataka" - Fairuz
 * 7) "You Know What You Are?"
 * 8) *"You know what you are" - closing dialog by Tuco from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
 * 9) *[Macabre Laugh] - A Fistful of Dollars
 * 10) *"Die, Motherfucker!" - Aliens
 * 11) *"C'mon, motherfuckers!" "Dance, motherfucker!" - Platoon
 * 12) "Flashback"
 * 13) *"Now hold up, man!" "Do it," "Everybody's got to die sometime," "I'm hurtin' real bad inside" - Platoon
 * 14) "Abortive"
 * 15) *"T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4; we've got the main engine start—we have main...", "America's first space shuttle!" "And the shuttle has cleared the tower." - NASA

Ministry

 * Al Jourgensen – vocals (1-3, 7-10), guitar, programming, production (1-10) , engineer
 * Paul Barker – bass, keyboards, programming, production (1-10), 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" (a pseudonym of Al Jourgensen) – album cover
 * "Ill" – album cover
 * Brian Shanley – album cover