“Effigy” by Ministry

Al Jourgensen wrote "Effigy", sings it and plays both the keyboards and the guitar on it, with Stephen George behind the drum kit and Vince Ely and Ian Taylor producing. It sits on With Sympathy, the first Ministry album, which Arista put out on May 10, 1983, and which had a brief second life overseas under another name, Work for Love.

George was the best-known face in that first lineup, but Ministry was Jourgensen's creation from the start. He'd been knocking around Chicago's underground scene in late 1981, cutting songs in his apartment on a brand-new ARP Omni synth, a reel-to-reel and a drum machine, until a demo reached Wax Trax! co-founder Jim Nash, who offered to record the material properly and pull a touring band together. Jourgensen gave that band its name.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.