Have we not been rocking hard enough lately? Well, buckle up, buttercup.

Al Jourgensen grew up listening to and loving a wide variety of music, from The Beatles and Led Zeppelin to George Jones and The Ramones. In the early 80’s he formed Ministry, a synth-pop band loosely in the neighborhood of Duran Duran and Depeche Mode. It was a nice neighborhood and they made some noise on the lower reaches of the US Dance chart, but essentially remained a deeply underground band.

As the decade progressed, they took a similar path to Depeche Mode, shedding the bright poppiness, darkening their palette, adding clanging percussion that sounded like machinery and tools, and generally absorbing the influence of the burgeoning genre known as “industrial,” all while helping to bring that genre to a steadily widening audience. Unlike Depeche Mode, Ministry began incorporating elements of thrash metal into their sound, making very aggressive dance music with loud beats and louder guitars.

In 1991, Gibby Haynes from Butthole Surfers (who were featured back here, since we share an alma mater) visited Jourgensen in a Chicago recording studio. Ministry had recently completed a hard-charging, speeding train of a backing track, and after sharing a few rounds of drinks, Jourgensen asked Haynes to record the vocal. Now, if you’re familiar with Butthole Surfers at all, you know Haynes is both demented and from Texas, and as the recording went along (and more drinks went along) he turned the track from industrial dance into whacked-out, psychobilly stomp. Then he fell asleep.

Meanwhile, Ministry’s record company wanted to know where all the songs were because they’d given a bunch of money to the band to record an album. The band had spent most of this money on illicit rock & roll things, so they had exactly one song — the demented one — and after adding a little spoken word intro from Jourgensen and inserting a few samples, they sent the track to the label. Ministry didn’t love the song, but they had nothing else. The label didn’t love the song, but they had nothing else. So they released “Jesus Built My Hotrod” as a single in the fall of 1991.

You know who did love “Jesus Built My Hotrod”? Everyone else who heard it.

The song climbed into the Top 20 on the US Alternative chart — not exactly mainstream, but certainly the closest Ministry had ever gotten. They appeared in alternative magazines and played at Lollapalooza, and after a few years in the sun, found themselves back underground.

So ding a ding dang your dang a long ling long ….. with Ministry.