As farewell albums go, Ministry’s The Last Sucker was excellent. Mixing the band’s individual brand of Industrial Metal with the usual incendiary politics resulted in a kickass album that still causes considerable rocking-out whenever it hits the playlist in these parts. Yet the actual official last release from the band, a covers album, is considerably less awesome, sadly. Classic Rock deserves all the accolades it receives from the Metal and Alternative music worlds, yet how many times must we hear Ram Jam’s Black Betty? Give Ministry dues, their cover works (one of those few songs that is impossible to screw up, really) but the overall choice of songs here is pretty dismal. T Rex’s Get It On is probably the most well-known track, and the cover adds little. Two of the covers here have appeared on studio albums before, the incredible blast that is The Doors’ Roadhouse Blues on the previously-mentioned The Last Sucker, and Bob Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay, which was on 1996’s Filth Pig, and is probably the most divisive song in the band’s discography, taking a noticeably New-Wave turn rather than the expected Thrashy blast.

Other songs here verge on boring. The Rolling Stones’ Under My Thumb opens the album and is passable enough, but sounds more like Type O Negative than Ministry, and as for the incredibly dull version of What A Wonderful World that finishes things off, let’s just pretend it doesn’t exist. Ministry try and match the original’s slow-moving swing before switching to a Punkier style at the end – if you want to hear a good cover of this classic song, try The Meads Of Asphodel’s Damascus Steel album.

There are some good moments – Deep Purple’s Space Truckin’ is a kickass track, as is the mandatory Sabbath cover of Supernaut. And of course, when you’re working with such quality source material as ZZ Top’s Just Got Paid, how could you produce anything but a raging blast of catchy madness? I have to mention Roadhouse Blues again, because it’s awesome, and it would be worth buying Cover Up just for that – if it wasn’t already on The Last Sucker, of course. Sadly, when you look at the number of average to poor songs versus the good ones, this is impossible to recommend for anyone other than extreme Ministry fans, and even they’ll get bored after a couple of spins. I’d have loved this band to continue – who wouldn’t like to hear a concept album based on a John McCain presidency? Alas, this is it, and this last hurray is a damp squib rather than the atomic blast it should have been.