Let’s prayTo TV divinityHe covets meDeity
Deity, one of the more combustible tracks from Ministry’s 1988 album The Land of Rape and Honey, does not so much play as it pummels. It arrives fully electrified, all scorched wires and shrieked conviction, powered by drum machines that rattle like rivet guns and guitars that grind with mesmerizing mechanical malice. Al Jourgensen, deep in his transformation from synthpop misfit to industrial agitator, distorts his voice into something closer to possession than performance. The result is part sermon, part siege.
This raw invocation has found new life through The Children’s Crusade, an electronic rock project based in Chicago and led in the studio by Jason Schmal. Onstage, it expands into a full-band affair with Cassie Tarakajian on guitar, Oscar Peck-Dorr on synths, and Danny Schwartz on bass/synths, but in its recorded form, the band’s work is Schmal’s searing solo project. Influenced by Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, and the denser corners of Björk and the Melvins, their version of Deity carries a different weight: it channels panic and pressure, all while clinging to the wreckage of belief.
The band’s interests orbit themes of obsession, excess, disillusionment, and the body in revolt. Their cover transforms the original’s fury into something equally caustic, yet more precise, like a liturgy for the unrepentant. In The Children’s Crusade’s hands, Deity becomes a blistered hymn barked into the void, a hymn for a country at war with its own ideals, all processed through cables, distortion pedals, and an ever-tightening grip on the meaning of faith itself.
“As a band from Chicago our favorite band from our city is Ministry, and if we were to cover anyone we thought it should be them,” says Schmal.
Listen to Deity below and order the single here.
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