Al Jourgensen has begun softening up on the subject of Ministry’s earliest work of late, and now is apparently ready to reclaim some of those songs, Taylor Swift-style.

Just a couple months after the unreleased “Same Old Madness” was included on the reissue of Ministry’s classic Twelve Inch Singles, another early With Sympathy-era track is seeing the light of day — this time courtesy of bandleader Al Jourgensen, who has famously distanced himself from his band’s early synthpop days.

For this week’s this installment of Vintage Video, we travel back 30 years to a kinder, gentler time, an era before Al Jourgensen discovered speed metal and riddled his face with tattoos and piercings, and was, instead, simply content to rock a sharp hat, sing in a faux British accent and craft some high-grade early-’80s synthpop.

Today we count down the best reissue of 2012 as voted on by Slicing Up Eyeballs in this year’s readers poll, and the Top 10 list includes releases by Icehouse, Ministry, The House of Love, Ian McCulloch of Echo & The Bunnymen, Yazoo, Bob Mould’s Sugar, My Bloody Valentine, Peter Gabriel and more.

This week’s new releases include expanded reissues of all three of The Beat’s original albums, plus a new CD of Duke Ellington interpretations from Joe Jackson (‘The Duke’), an alleged expanded reissue of Ministry’s 1983 synthpop debut ‘With Sympathy’ and the CD and digital releases of ‘The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends.’

Al Jourgensen’s reactivated Ministry currently is in the midst of a short U.S. comeback tour, but could the band’s much-loved — and, famously, much-hated by Jourgensen himself — 1983 synthpop debut ‘With Sympathy’ finally be receiving the expanded reissue that was first set for release back in 2008?

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 […]