UMUR "With Sympathy" is the debut full-length studio album by US synth pop (later industrial metal act) Ministry. The album was released through Arista Records in May 1983. It was released in Europe under the title "Work for Love", featuring an alternate tracklist, replacing "What He Say" with "Do the Etawa" (which is not featured on the US version), and featuring a different running order of the tracks.

Ministry was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1981 by producer, singer and instrumentalist Al Jourgensen. Jourgensen had been active in the Chicago post-punk underground scene with various artists since he moved there from Denver in 1978, but he opted to form his own band in 1981 and started writing material using an ARP Omni synthesizer, a drum machine, and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. A shifting cast of musicians were in and out of the band in the formative years but when it came time to record the material for "With Sympathy", the band were down to the duo of Jourgensen (Vocals, Keyboards) and Stephen George (drums).

"With Sympathy" is an interesting release to review, as most people coming to the album today, are fans of Ministry´s later industrial metal sound, and the material on "With Sympathy" is arguably as far removed from that sound as it can be. People will have very different expectations and prerequisites when listening to and experiencing "With Sympathy". Stylistically this is synth pop greatly influenced by contemporary UK artists like Depeche Mode, Japan, and New Order. The influence is so great, that Jourgensen even adds a faux British accent to his vocals, which is a bit funny as he is an American, but it actually works pretty well within the band´s synth pop sound. His vocals are otherwise well performed and he has a suiting voice for this type of music (again far removed from his future raw self). While he can sing melodic and mainstream oriented, he does sometimes add a slightly more aggressive touch to his singing style, which reminds me a bit of Jaz Coleman from Killing Joke. It´s not that he distorts his vocals, but more the attitude and his delivery of the vocals.

"With Sympathy" is a well produced 80s release, featuring a detailed and professional sound production. The material is quite catchy and well written too, and it´s interesting that Ministry weren´t more than moderately successful with the release of "With Sympathy", as there is definitely enough quality songwriting and performances here to equal at least the early releases by some of the above mentioned artists. Moderately successful shouldn´t be understood as if Ministry didn´t have any success though as the album did break into the middle part of the Billboard 200 album chart, and they landed themselves the supporting gig for The Police during the North American leg of their "Synchronicity" (1983) tour. Jourgensen however soon became dissatisfied with the label support from Arista Records and also the fact that he felt he was pressured into creating more commercially appealing versions of the songs that he had written and imagined otherwise. Add to those reasons, that he simply became more interestered in raw music styles like hardcore, and it´s only natural that "With Sympathy" ended up being the only mainstream oriented synth-pop album released under the Ministry monicker (although their next album is also an electronic synth pop/rock album it´s a much harder edged and darker release). It´s still a worthy release to fans of the genre though (and probably sadly forgotten by most) and a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.

Warthur This live album is, perhaps, Ministry's finest moment. Leaning harder on the metallic side of their sound and veering further away from electronics, it consists of a short, angry blast of aggression using some of the post powerful and visceral songs selected from The Land of Rape and Honey and The Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Taste. It's a compact set offering everything which was thrilling and cutting edge about Ministry back at the dawn of the 1990s, drawn from some of their best albums, and the live context adds a little extra dose of fury which never quite translated into their studio albums of the era. Brilliant.

SilentScream213 A lot of really good ideas and unique aspects to this album that were groundbreaking at the time. Probably most later Industrial Metal bands used this thing as a blueprint. The speedy, riff-focused parts of this are great, like Tv 2 and Hero, which rip along at chainsaw shredding speed. Al usually sounds good, which a very gruff yet nasally yell that is no doubt processed with some distortion.

What really ruins this album for me is the insane repetitiveness, especially in the annoying samples. Most of the songs here have parts where some vocal sample is repeated about 16 times, and it’s abundant with random shout or spoken samples that are thrown in at the rate of a snare drum. On the same note, even when the guitar riffs and rhythm section are good, it quickly goes stale after the same measure has been repeated about 32 times. There’s very little variety to each track, making each one more or less based around one repetitive section.

The title track is an example that almost uses samples well, specifically the choir vocals that add an epic touch to it, but then the rest of the track falls into the same habit of throwing in voices and what not so much that it just becomes annoying. Despite the abundance of interesting and unique ideas here, it’s something I have no desire to revisit because of how annoying it can be.

SilentScream213 The album starts off quite energetically, with some simple yet aggressive and heavy riffs and some artificial but effective beats with some nice double bass work giving it some extra power. After the first couple of songs, it shifts more towards Electro-Industrial territory and loses its metallic edge. It also slows down considerably, and relies on sampling to break its simple, repetitive beats. Most of the non-musical noises thrown in add little to the sound and are usually just abrasive for the sake of being abrasive. The instrumental tracks are especially hard to bear, as Al’s manic, crazed vocals are one of the main appeals to the album.

An incredibly unique record when it was first conceived, and highly influential to Industrial Metal and other similar circles of music. Today, it is too simple and limited without offering any staying power to hold up very well.

Warthur Twitch is the - in my opinion sorely underrated - bridge between early Ministry and their later industrial metal form that debuted on The Land of Rape and Honey. When I say "early Ministry" here I don't mean the gothy synthpop stylings of their debut album, With Sympathy - nothing else in their discography really sounds like that - but instead the Ministry of their early singles, stuff like Everyday Is Halloween or All Day (the latter of which has a remix represented here). The album is very much on the EBM side of electronic industrial, but it's also on the harder-edged side of that - it'd just take someone picking up a guitar and matching the synth riffs on it to tip this over the edge into industrial metal.