The Land of Rape and Honey

The Land of Rape and Honey is the third studio album by industrial metal band Ministry, released in 1988 on Sire Records. This album is the band's first attempt at mixing industrial with rock, as opposed to more electronically influenced previous albums, although only the first three tracks use guitars extensively. This also marks the inclusion of bassist Paul Barker, who would remain in Ministry as a member alongside Al Jourgensen until his departure in 2004.

Contents

• Track listing
• Samples
• Ministry
• Additional personnel
• Songs
• References

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 album cover is an electronically processed image of a burned corpse in the Leipzig-Thekla subcamp of Buchenwald. Jourgensen took a picture of the holocaust from a 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."

The track "Stigmata" is featured in Richard Stanley's 1990 science fiction thriller Hardware, although the band shown performing the track is actually Gwar.

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.