MINISTRY + CHELSEA WOLFE

July 20, 2018
07:00 PM - 11PM
14+

DOORS – 7PM

CHELSEA WOLFE – 8PM

MINISTRY – 9:05PM

CURFEW – 11PM

Ministry has been on an opening-act hot streak lately. In 2017, the industrial pioneers toured with hip-hop rabble-rousers Death Grips, while for its March 24 Vegas show, the band has enlisted bewitching dark-rock artist Chelsea Wolfe to open. Here are three reasons that pairing makes perfect sense.

Ministry has a well-documented knack for deconstructing electronic, rock and metal sounds, then reassembling them into new, punishing compositions. Chelsea Wolfe, meanwhile, defies sonic categorization. She combines doom-drenched folk-metal, sludgy drone-rock infected with distortion and fuzzy stoner howls cut through with pulsating electronic elements.

Ministry’s new AmeriKKKant, is full of bracing political invective cloaked in diverse shades of aggression: barking thrash metal, sample-heavy electronic pastiches and piledriving hard-rock churns. Chelsea Wolfe’s latest, September’s Hiss Spun, is more inward-looking, but no less unsettled—perhaps because her approach is rooted in nuance, from growling death metal roars (“Vex”) to haunted house-creepy cinematic interludes (“Strain”).