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If The Last Sucker is indeed the final Ministry album ever, then Al Jourgensen is going out in a raging, snarling blaze of glory. The album is presented as the third in a trilogy taking on the evils inhabiting the White House, and on that score, the disc certainly delivers. Ministry’s usual machine gun industrial metal sound is wedded to whipsaw lyrics and sound bites savaging President Bush and his asinine policies, often using the President’s own words to mock the man. On Death and Destruction, Jourgensen takes a moment of Presidential laugh, and loops it to form a disturbing, moronic “heh-heh-heh” cackle, behind Bush’s infamous, “I am the Decider,” comment. Bush also ‘contributes’ the title phrase to the song.

The rhetorical bullets are pretty much flying from the opening moments of The Last Sucker. Let’s Go gets things started with Ministry’s trademark, high-octane, industrial tinged metal groove thing kicking in after a cheery opening voiceover sample declares, “The party’s over for this existence/it’s the end of the mankind as we know it/hail and fire/hail and fire.” The music is driving, insistent, everything you’d expect from the band behind such classics as Psalm 69 and The Land of Rape and Honey. And lyrically? With a Republican in the White House? You know Jourgensen’s bringing the sledgehammer to this party. Try, “Let’s go for the final attack/Let’s go for war in Iraq/Let’s go for starting World War III,” for starters, setting up the chorus invitation to “Let’s Go Insane!”

Vice-President Cheney, the ringleader of the Bush circus, also comes under a withering fire. The Dick Song chronicles his attempted cover-up of his hunting accident via samples from NBC News coverage. Subtlety is certainly not the order of the day, with, “Dick Cheney Son of Satan/He is the Chosen One,” providing the chorus.

When not directly taking on the powers that be, Jourgensen pens a couple of tracks bringing the perspective of the grunts on the ground, fighting the wars started by the high muckety-mucks in Washington. Life is Good, chronicles the stark brutality of a soldier’s existence, and the difficulty of fitting into a normal life after he’s been out there killing to survive. Musically, it’s an understated gem, because it doesn’t come after you as hard or obviously as a lot of the track on this CD. The combination of that sneaky intensity and the despair felt by the protagonist makes for a powerful track, one that might sneak past listeners at first, and one of the best on the album.

The second half of the album mixes things up a bit, with Jourgensen dusting off a couple of different styles. Roadhouse Blues brings an amped up blues number to the proceedings, while, Die in A Crash has the band dusting off their punk chops. It might be the catchiest melody on the entire album, but the lyrics belie the musical notes struck, “Consumed by rage, eyes full of hate/I pray for holocaust/God damned us all to hell to make us pay.”

And if all that weren’t enough, Jourgensen saved the best for last, with End of Days Part Two bringing The Last Sucker, and the Ministry experience to glorious, epic closure. The track opens with on the heels of End of Days Part One, dropping that tracks high energy mode into a laid back groove, with Jourgensen employing a near-rap delivery over the music. The guitars provide an almost optimistic counterpart to the, hell, maybe it’s time for an apocalypse” themed lyrical imagery. Female vocal add a ethereal note of unreality as Jourgensen throatily growls out his final words, “I constantly fear everything I see/Blood is the fist of authority/Pestilence is my rabid dog unchained/Another road sign marks the end of days.” His own final words are a shouted repetition of the words, “It’s the End of Days,” that give way to one final sample, a lengthy portion of Dwight Eisenhower’s chilling and prescient Farewell Address. Delivered in 1960, the former Supreme Commander’s counsel against the rise of the military-industrial complex is almost prophetic, and worth repeating in these times, “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Jourgensen, fittingly, lets Eisenhower deliver the farewell for the both of them, “Now I am soon become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it. Thank you and Goodnight.” The track trails off into the sunset, providing an incredible coda for a legendary band.