Rio Grande Blood

Overview

The album is the 2nd part of the band's anti-George W. Bush trilogy, preceded by 2004's Houses of the Molé and followed by 2007's The Last Sucker.

The title of the album is a parody of the 1972 ZZ Top album Rio Grande Mud.^[6][7]

Just like Houses of the Molé, Rio Grande Blood contains very political lyrics, making frequent allusions to the George W. Bush administration. The second track makes an explicit reference to Bush as Señor Peligro, which translates to "Mr. Danger" in Spanish. Some of the issues raised include the then-current Iraq War, U.S. immigration policy and U.S. military policy (particularly the US Marine Corps in the song "Gangreen"). The Halliburton corporation is also quoted and linked to the Bush administration.

The album also contains allegations of the Bush administration complicity in the 9/11 attacks in the track "Lieslieslies," which contains audio samples from the conspiracy documentary Loose Change.^[6] The song received a nomination for Best Metal Performance at the 49th Grammy Awards.^[8][6]

A remix of the song "The Great Satan" from Rantology appears on this album. Along with "LiesLiesLies", "The Great Satan" was also nominated for a Grammy.^[8][6]

Samples of genuine Bush soundbites are cut-and-pasted together at various points to satirical effect: for example, the title track begins with Bush stating "I have adopted sophisticated terrorist tactics and I'm a dangerous, dangerous man with dangerous, dangerous weapons."

The album was re-released in remixed form as Rio Grande Dub on July 10, 2007.

Jourgensen ranks Rio Grande Blood as his second favorite Ministry album saying that not only he liked the songs but he had a good time working with Paul Raven and Tommy Victor. He was also proud that some of the songs were used in the 2008 Academy Award winning film The Hurt Locker.^[9]