For fans of Ministry’s early synthpop incarnation, here’s a real treat: Four tracks recorded live in Chicago at the short-lived Misfits club in March 1982, the earliest known live recordings of Al Jourgensen and Co. made nearly 30 years ago — and long before the group morphed into an industrial giant and then near-metal act.

This has been online for a couple years now, but it didn’t come to our attention until this week: It’s a clip of future Oscar winner Trent Reznor in one of his mid-’80s, pre-Nine Inch Nails bands performing a fairly faithful cover of the Billy Idol hit ‘Eyes Without a Face.’

Could it be? Is that Ministry’s Al Jourgensen singing ‘don’t give me that so-so soda/that same old cola’ in this 1983 commercial for Shasta? And here’s a purported 1982 7UP jingle sung by Gary Numan, too.

With Ministry now over and a bunch of ringers currently out on the road as the Revolting Cocks, industrial godfather Al Jourgensen is threatening to […]