Bikers Welcome Ladies Drink Free

The hints had been there on almost every album post-Twitch, so when Ministry leader Al Jourgensen announced his Buck Satan alias was getting his own rootin-tootin, heroin-shootin' country band, nobody fell off their bar stool. The results, on the other hand, are a surprise as Jourgensen's original vision of a Ministry album where Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens guest starred has morphed into a smaller, more sensible, and arguably more interesting project, sounding more like a Texas-fied splinter group of the original Revolting Cocks. Drum machines — and not necessarily the thunderous kind found on Ministry records — propel the band with fiddles, banjos, pedal steel, and other twangy bits on top. The lyrical content is a cutting kind of silly that's most in line with the Cocks' record Beers, Steers + Queers; it's just that this time, things get cautionary. Opener "Quicker Than Liquor" warns that heroin is a hot rail to hell while "Medication Nation" suggests those ghost riders in the sky are all doctors with mind-numbing scripts in their hands. Even the take on the Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil" comes with the proper balance of wistfulness and paranoia, but this album is not mis-titled, and plenty of fun is to be had. "I Hate Every Bone in Your Body Except Mine" says it all, and if songs titles like "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" or "Cheap Wine, Cheap Ramen" excite you, then rest easy and reload because the tunes themselves deliver. Good times and you just might learn something, but mostly good times.