Released 1990 (1990) Length 5:02 | Genre Industrial metal Label Sire/Warner Bros. | |
Recorded 1989 at Chicago Trax Studios Writer(s) Al Jourgensen, Paul Barker, Chris Connelly, Kevin Ogilvie | ||
"Thieves" is a song by American industrial metal band Ministry. It is the opening track from the band's fourth studio album, The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989). The song's lyrics deal mainly with political corruption. The song includes dialogue samples from R. Lee Ermey's drill instructor character in Full Metal Jacket. Ministry's version was featured in the 1992 science fiction film Freejack, also in the 2009 video game Brütal Legend.
Contents
Music and critical reception
The song is based on a harmonic stasis. It features the extensive use of E minor chord. 118 out of 138 measures of the song are based on the same E minor chord, while the rest are F minor chords. Al Jourgensen sings only the G note, while the song "shifts gears rhythmically" through its sections and quadruples its tempo.
Tom Moon, the author of 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, wrote, "At the two minute mark of "Thieves" and several times later in the song, Ministry's pulse is bolstered by what sounds like a whirring pneumatic drill. It's not a gimmick—it almost functions as a solo guitar, adding punctuation."
Ministry
Additional personnel
Limp Bizkit cover
American nu metal band Limp Bizkit covered parts of this song during Woodstock 99 as well as releasing their cover version of "Thieves" as a single via Twitter on November 1, 2013 for free download. Limp Bizkit performed it throughout many of the band's live sets since 1997, but the band did not release a studio version until 2013. Limp Bizkit's version does not include the samples that are on Ministry's version.
Axl Rosenberg of MetalSucks criticized the cover, stating that the band "butchered" the song.