Ministry's Dark Side of the Spoon has been banned from Kmart, but not because of the apparent reference to drug use in the title or the potentially offensive religious reference scribbled on a blackboard beside an image of the American flag.

Instead, the massive retail chain says it doesn't approve of the picture of a naked woman -- in this case, an overweight, naked woman -- included in the cover art.

The banning makes the album the second rock record in a month to be deemed inappropriate for sale by the national retailer. In May, both Kmart and Wal-Mart pulled the self-titled debut album by Godsmack from their stores -- where it had been on sale for several months -- when parents in the Cleveland area objected to both chains about vulgarities and about lyrics that seemed to deal with suicide.

In Ministry's case, "it was the nudity on the album cover" that prompted the decision, Kmart spokesperson Dennis Wigent said Monday (June 14). Although the album came out June 8, that decision, too, was made in May at the company's corporate office in Troy, Mich., Wigent said.

Wal-Mart never planned to carry Dark Side of the Spoon in the first place, whose title apparently makes a reference to the act of shooting up heroin, because the Ministry's albums have sold poorly there in the past, Wal-Mart spokesperson John Bisio said.

The storied Chicago industrial-rock duo's members -- guitarist/singer Al Jourgenson and bassist/programmer Paul Barker -- declined to comment, according to Jay Wilson, the group's publicist at Warner Bros. Records.

The nude woman on the album's cover is depicted facing a blackboard and wearing a dunce cap. The image suggests that she has been punished and instructed to write the phrase "I will be god" -- likely a play on the phrase "I will be good" -- over and over on the blackboard; an American flag appears in the upper-right corner.

Dark Side of the Spoon, which includes "Bad Blood" (RealAudio excerpt), follows up Filth Pig (1996), whose cover shows an elderly man with what appears to be a massive head wound, waving an American flag. Both albums showcase the jagged industrial-rock sound that Ministry, who started as a synth-pop band, have adopted over the past decade.

Dark Side of the Spoon has been a big seller in the past week at Tower Records outlets in Atlanta and Chicago, according to store managers. Joe Kvidera, general manager of the Tower Records in Chicago's Lincoln Park, said it was the store's fourth-best seller last week; the store's #1 record was the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication.

Kvidera said he's received only one query about the cover, from a concerned parent who expressed surprise that it didn't contain a parental-advisory label.

Neither the Ministry album nor Godsmack carries the industry's warning label, which advises potential buyers of "explicit content." By store policy, Kmart does not sell albums that bear the label or albums whose use of profanity or controversial images might offend customers, Wigent said.

"I'm just surprised no one has complained about that spoon reference [in the title]," Kvidera said of the Ministry album. Heroin users often liquefy the powdered drug by holding a lighter under a spoon.

Keith Medin, who manages the Tower store in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood, said no one has mentioned the cover to him. "We usually don't get complaints like that," he said. "They come not expecting censored versions of stuff."

Betty Travis, president of the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance in Sacramento, Calif., said she had not seen the album cover and offered no opinion on Kmart's decision. But she said she doubts she would have any reason to object to the cover.

"Wherever they put fat people out there, as long as it's in a positive light, that's fine with us," she said.