AN INTERVIEW WITH MAX BRODY
by Malcolm Dome
August, 2021:
How did you join the band in the first place?
In 1999 I was asked to play sax for the tour in support of the "Dark Side Of The Spoon" LP. I had been in a band with Rey called Euripides Pants. He recommended me for the gig. After the tour everyone but Barker and I quit. Then when the A.I. movie opportunity came up in 2000, and I not only helped Barker write music but then proceeded to play the drum parts--and they didn't need fixing--Jourgensen invited me to join.
Who decided what tracks you worked on for 'Animositisomina'?
Al is the leader of the band so, ultimately it would have been him. That said, There were a number of song ideas that he and Barker had been working on from before, that I guess they had edited together from jams--I think it was Rey and Lou and Paul, but I'm not sure. Maybe Zlatko, too? I don't know. They were made before I got involved with the band. I ended up copying the sessions, rearranging parts and messing with them myself while learning the editing software. Sometimes they would like my suggestions and would run with my version of it. I also brought some song ideas to Paul and if he liked them, we would spruce them up and show them to Al. Al would then approve or disprove, and would sometimes ask for changes. Then he'd write lyrics. Any place in the credits it says "programming" I would call it "co-writing". I played on all of the songs, but, which ever way you want to term it, I helped write 6 of the 10 numbers on that one --Animosity, Lockbox, Shove, and especially Broken, Stolen and Leper. Those 3 started with me.
How did Jourgensen and Barker construct the tracks?
From my point of view, Barker and I constructed tracks for Animositisomina, handed them to Al and he did his thing with them once we were out at Sonic Ranch. Al was not all that involved during the early song writing processes. Honestly, he was nearing the end of using hard drugs and was about to marry Angie and start trying not to die. Something really had to happen or he might have! Once we were out at Sonic Ranch he definately become more involved, but more on the lyrics, singing and the over-arching vision and production sides of it. We used Protools software, though, to do the basic construction and wrote the songs within the software at both my little studio and Barkers home studios. I made tons of samples and made "song seeds"--loopable samples layered on top of each other-- at my apartment and took them to Barkers. Ministry had been using another software to compose within prior to Animositisomina, I forget which. Then Paul and I learned Protools together. But I must say he taught me quite a bit about producion and how to work with and organize samples among many other things. I came up with my own method for sample-driven song writing around then that I've used on many LPs, not only Ministry stuff. I love the method--but thats a long discussion for another time. And then of course, we handed everything off to Al. Once he got his hands on it, it typically mutated a bit. But that was not a bad thing!
Was the Magazine cover 'The Light Shines Out Of Me' something Ministry had done live?
Not on the '99 tour, but I think Paul told me that they had played it long ago and wanted to bring it back. I'm not certain about that.
What was the relationship like between Jourgensen and Barker on this album?
Everything seemed to be going surprisingly well, actually, to me. On the 1999 tour and during the A.I. movie Al was so focussed on drugs that it seemed like Paul had to really step up and take care of a lot of things or everything would have completely fallen apart. It was pretty much utterly ridiculous. I was never a fan before being in the band so I did not know about the history of their relationship or anything else. But I think we were both just so incredibly relieved that Al decided to finally get clean, or at least off the crack and heroin. We all still drank, and I smoked weed, but it was way more focussed on work. It was after the tour and Barker quit that it seemed like a huge shit hit the fan. But I was the new guy and didn't know what beefs each might have had brewing for years or what the deal was. I just got caught clueless in the middle. It definately got worse than I had realized, to the point that near the end of recording Houses Of The Mole, I was fired for being Barkers friend and helping him with his next demo.
What changed on 'Houses Of The Mole' without Barker?
Instead of working on song ideas with Barker I was doing that with Mike Scaccia. I continued with my 'sample-driven' writing method, only with a badass like Mike right there to add guitar, which was completely rad. Mike and I also jammed for hours on end every day. We had a setup to record whatever popped into our heads in a big sideroom. We spent many months out at Sonic Ranch coming up with ideas. That LP was made created from the start at Sonic Ranch unlike Animositisomina, which had material from several sources that were brought together at the studio.
I might sum it up like this: Al came up to me one day and sang, like Bevis and Butthead might, the intro-idea for a song that he had come up with that he then asked me to write a "biker-party-anthem" for; that become the song, "Waiting". But he proclaimed that day that Biker Party Anthems were all he wanted me to write from then on. No mew-mew synths or angry nerds allowed...That would have been some sort of Barker-like behavior I guess. So, things seemed to take a turn for the more metal side at that point.
Who decided which tracks you worked on for this album?
Naturally that would be Al. He is the decision maker.
Rey Washam has said he played drums on the album but never got any credit. Is that accurate?
Well, I was not in the room when that all went down, but I do know that Rey was at the early part of those sessions and that he recorded drum parts for some numbers before getting into arguements with Al about whatever and Al soon firing him and 'replacing' his parts or having me perform my own parts to them. While I'm sure that Al would cover his butt and remove any of Rey's actual drumming, some of Rey's ideas may have remained, programmed in as samples or whatnot. I don't really know for sure. If Rey recognizes his parts I believe him. So, I mean, while technically he's probably not there, he sorta might be, too, see? Its a sad deal that typically drummers don't get to copyright drum parts, in general. But I kinda feel like he shoulda gotten at least a little credit. I guess that's what you get when you're dealing with an angry Al. Once he decided he I was on "Barkers team", as if there were sides, I was cut off too.
You are credited with co-writing all the tracks on these albums on which you appeared. How were these written?
While I was in Ministry, basically I made rough drafts of songs with Barker or Scaccia or by myself, which if Al liked them and could sort of hear a part for himself to develop, he could take them and make them into whatever he wanted. Stuff that went unused would go towards making the Pink Anvil or Goobersmoocher LPs, so it was all good effort as far as I was concerned. Basically though, the stuff with Barker was more sample-driven music from its inception with instruments layered on top. It also used lo-fi jam tapes mixed with hi-fi recording to make an interesting raw and yet studio-polished sound. He brought a vibe-thing to the table from his old band the Blackouts and a way of distorting almost everything in a really great way. We could drop out the instruments and a bed of interesting sampled shit would be going on. That song writing style gives the music a certain ambience I think is super cool. The stuff with Scaccia tended to be based more off of sampling ourselves playing instruments, building song constructs and then learning what I had edited together and multitracking stuff over that. He brought his amazing and freakish speed metal thing to the table from his old band Rigor Mortis. As for myself, I think I snuck in some small elements of jazz, punk and ambient music into the mix of styles, while encouraging Al towards uptempo music and being a song writer and of general usefullness beyond drumming duties. It was more band like with Scaccia and construction-zone like with Barker.
Getting to work with ANY of those guys was a huge honor, regardless. I will always be grateful for the experience no matter how F'd up it ended!
by Malcolm Dome
August, 2021:
How did you join the band in the first place?
In 1999 I was asked to play sax for the tour in support of the "Dark Side Of The Spoon" LP. I had been in a band with Rey called Euripides Pants. He recommended me for the gig. After the tour everyone but Barker and I quit. Then when the A.I. movie opportunity came up in 2000, and I not only helped Barker write music but then proceeded to play the drum parts--and they didn't need fixing--Jourgensen invited me to join.
Who decided what tracks you worked on for 'Animositisomina'?
Al is the leader of the band so, ultimately it would have been him. That said, There were a number of song ideas that he and Barker had been working on from before, that I guess they had edited together from jams--I think it was Rey and Lou and Paul, but I'm not sure. Maybe Zlatko, too? I don't know. They were made before I got involved with the band. I ended up copying the sessions, rearranging parts and messing with them myself while learning the editing software. Sometimes they would like my suggestions and would run with my version of it. I also brought some song ideas to Paul and if he liked them, we would spruce them up and show them to Al. Al would then approve or disprove, and would sometimes ask for changes. Then he'd write lyrics. Any place in the credits it says "programming" I would call it "co-writing". I played on all of the songs, but, which ever way you want to term it, I helped write 6 of the 10 numbers on that one --Animosity, Lockbox, Shove, and especially Broken, Stolen and Leper. Those 3 started with me.
How did Jourgensen and Barker construct the tracks?
From my point of view, Barker and I constructed tracks for Animositisomina, handed them to Al and he did his thing with them once we were out at Sonic Ranch. Al was not all that involved during the early song writing processes. Honestly, he was nearing the end of using hard drugs and was about to marry Angie and start trying not to die. Something really had to happen or he might have! Once we were out at Sonic Ranch he definately become more involved, but more on the lyrics, singing and the over-arching vision and production sides of it. We used Protools software, though, to do the basic construction and wrote the songs within the software at both my little studio and Barkers home studios. I made tons of samples and made "song seeds"--loopable samples layered on top of each other-- at my apartment and took them to Barkers. Ministry had been using another software to compose within prior to Animositisomina, I forget which. Then Paul and I learned Protools together. But I must say he taught me quite a bit about producion and how to work with and organize samples among many other things. I came up with my own method for sample-driven song writing around then that I've used on many LPs, not only Ministry stuff. I love the method--but thats a long discussion for another time. And then of course, we handed everything off to Al. Once he got his hands on it, it typically mutated a bit. But that was not a bad thing!
Was the Magazine cover 'The Light Shines Out Of Me' something Ministry had done live?
Not on the '99 tour, but I think Paul told me that they had played it long ago and wanted to bring it back. I'm not certain about that.
What was the relationship like between Jourgensen and Barker on this album?
Everything seemed to be going surprisingly well, actually, to me. On the 1999 tour and during the A.I. movie Al was so focussed on drugs that it seemed like Paul had to really step up and take care of a lot of things or everything would have completely fallen apart. It was pretty much utterly ridiculous. I was never a fan before being in the band so I did not know about the history of their relationship or anything else. But I think we were both just so incredibly relieved that Al decided to finally get clean, or at least off the crack and heroin. We all still drank, and I smoked weed, but it was way more focussed on work. It was after the tour and Barker quit that it seemed like a huge shit hit the fan. But I was the new guy and didn't know what beefs each might have had brewing for years or what the deal was. I just got caught clueless in the middle. It definately got worse than I had realized, to the point that near the end of recording Houses Of The Mole, I was fired for being Barkers friend and helping him with his next demo.
What changed on 'Houses Of The Mole' without Barker?
Instead of working on song ideas with Barker I was doing that with Mike Scaccia. I continued with my 'sample-driven' writing method, only with a badass like Mike right there to add guitar, which was completely rad. Mike and I also jammed for hours on end every day. We had a setup to record whatever popped into our heads in a big sideroom. We spent many months out at Sonic Ranch coming up with ideas. That LP was made created from the start at Sonic Ranch unlike Animositisomina, which had material from several sources that were brought together at the studio.
I might sum it up like this: Al came up to me one day and sang, like Bevis and Butthead might, the intro-idea for a song that he had come up with that he then asked me to write a "biker-party-anthem" for; that become the song, "Waiting". But he proclaimed that day that Biker Party Anthems were all he wanted me to write from then on. No mew-mew synths or angry nerds allowed...That would have been some sort of Barker-like behavior I guess. So, things seemed to take a turn for the more metal side at that point.
Who decided which tracks you worked on for this album?
Naturally that would be Al. He is the decision maker.
Rey Washam has said he played drums on the album but never got any credit. Is that accurate?
Well, I was not in the room when that all went down, but I do know that Rey was at the early part of those sessions and that he recorded drum parts for some numbers before getting into arguements with Al about whatever and Al soon firing him and 'replacing' his parts or having me perform my own parts to them. While I'm sure that Al would cover his butt and remove any of Rey's actual drumming, some of Rey's ideas may have remained, programmed in as samples or whatnot. I don't really know for sure. If Rey recognizes his parts I believe him. So, I mean, while technically he's probably not there, he sorta might be, too, see? Its a sad deal that typically drummers don't get to copyright drum parts, in general. But I kinda feel like he shoulda gotten at least a little credit. I guess that's what you get when you're dealing with an angry Al. Once he decided he I was on "Barkers team", as if there were sides, I was cut off too.
You are credited with co-writing all the tracks on these albums on which you appeared. How were these written?
While I was in Ministry, basically I made rough drafts of songs with Barker or Scaccia or by myself, which if Al liked them and could sort of hear a part for himself to develop, he could take them and make them into whatever he wanted. Stuff that went unused would go towards making the Pink Anvil or Goobersmoocher LPs, so it was all good effort as far as I was concerned. Basically though, the stuff with Barker was more sample-driven music from its inception with instruments layered on top. It also used lo-fi jam tapes mixed with hi-fi recording to make an interesting raw and yet studio-polished sound. He brought a vibe-thing to the table from his old band the Blackouts and a way of distorting almost everything in a really great way. We could drop out the instruments and a bed of interesting sampled shit would be going on. That song writing style gives the music a certain ambience I think is super cool. The stuff with Scaccia tended to be based more off of sampling ourselves playing instruments, building song constructs and then learning what I had edited together and multitracking stuff over that. He brought his amazing and freakish speed metal thing to the table from his old band Rigor Mortis. As for myself, I think I snuck in some small elements of jazz, punk and ambient music into the mix of styles, while encouraging Al towards uptempo music and being a song writer and of general usefullness beyond drumming duties. It was more band like with Scaccia and construction-zone like with Barker.
Getting to work with ANY of those guys was a huge honor, regardless. I will always be grateful for the experience no matter how F'd up it ended!
MINISTRY...circa 1999-2004...some photos...some Youtubes...
The very last thing I did as a member of MINISTRY back in 2004 was to gather together all the little samples, the little vocal clippings if you will, for a song called WTV...
