The night was started off with Vegas boys Hemlock, who were not too bad but weren’t given a lot of time to try to win some new fans, but most in the crowd seemed to enjoy them. Afterward came Meshuggah, the hard hitting metal band from Sweden. I had heard some of the stuff way back and always thought it sounded good, watching them live was no different. Their sound was great hard guitars and pounding drums with some killer vocals.

The only problem I had with Meshuggah was… their boring as hell to watch on stage. While yes they sound awesome, there is no stage presents with these guys. They basically stood on stage and played no one moved much other than the vocalist who would nod his head to the music. And to add to that they had almost no lights on them what so ever, so you got a band who isn’t doing anything, and you can’t really see but they sound good, so guess it was one of those take the good over the bad kind of deals.

Which now brings us to our main event or at least it seemed that way, as the stage crew was setting up for Ministry’s set. Two huge pieces of fence were set up on each side of the stage, and one other set up across the front of the stage, almost looked like a ufc fight was fixing to go down. I guess in some ways a fight was fixing to go down and we just didn’t know it yet. As the band came out and got ready all were awaiting Jourgensen to come out on stage.

Once Al got on stage the place was chaotic, as the lights went out Ministry hit us hard and didn’t stop. Most of the first half of the set was newer songs off of the last few albums of recent years. Which was cool because most were songs I had never seen done live. The guys had an intermission which was funny with weird little videos playing on the screen. When they came back that’s when the fans were hit with big hits and old school sounds that made Ministry what they were.

I was taken back to my high school days as the sounds of “N.W.O”, “Thieves” and “Just One Fix” were blasted throughout the Verizon. What also made the second half of the show was some of the covers that Ministry did, most off their album “The Cover Up”. Before doing a cover of ZZ tops “Just Got Paid” Billy Gibbons walked out on stage and hugged Jourgensen with huge response from the fans.  After the awesome cover Al told the fans that we should be honored since the king of Texas was in the house, saying fuck the governor, Billy’s the King. The night was one of the best I have had in a long while and as I said before, I really hope this isn’t the last we see or hear from Ministry…