‘Final Album, Final Tour’: Ministry’s Al Jourgensen Talks ‘Hate to Go’
Categoria: Musica
Ministry does not pull a single punch on "Hate To Go," which castigates social media, AI and the current political leadership of the United States.
Por Billboard | 30/10/2026
Raise a skeptical eyebrow if you will, but Al Jourgensen will swear on any object you put him front of him that Ministry’ s new album Hate to Go (Take Out or Delivery) is its last, and that the group will be over after touring to support it next year. “It is so — final album, final tour. In 14 months from now I will be just a simple goat herder,” the dreadlocked Jourgensen, who founded Ministry during 1981, tells Billboard via Zoom from his current home in southern California. “I will be the Greta Garbo of industrial — ‘I vant to be left alone,’ OK? This is not like something where Motley Crue talks a blood oath they will not be back, and four months later they’re doing a world tour. I’m f***in’ done.” And why, you ask? “Look, man, I’ve been at this job for…it’ll be 45 years this year, and at 45 years of the same job generally you get a gold watch and a pension and you’re just happy to get the f*** away from your job,” says Jorgensen, 68. “I don’t understand these people that keep coming back. There’s no regrets. There’s no turning back. We’re excited for new possibilities in life instead of doing the same job for 45 years.” There’s no question that Jourgensen and his shifting stable of collaborators have done that job well, of course. A fan of rock, punk, country and experimental styles, Jourgensen started Ministry after a tenure in the post-punk band Special Affect, introducing the new band’s dance-floor meets factory forge sound with singles on Chicago’s famed Wax Trax! Records label and making its live performance debut on New Year’s Day 1982. A deal with Arista Records, however, resulted in the sanitized synth-pop of With Sympathy in 1983. “Clive Davis didn’t want that (heavy stuff),” recalls Jourgensen, who redid many of those songs on Ministry’s 2025 album The Squirrely Years. “He appointed producers, backup singers. He even sent in lyrics that I had to sing and all that stuff — so I was literally probably the precursor to all the boy band stuff. The only thing I didn’t have was dance moves.” Jourgensen regained control by moving to Sire Records for 1986’s Twitch and progressed from there on subsequent, definitive albums such as The Land of Rape and Honey in 1988, The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste in 1990, the platinum Psalm 69 in 1992 — which netted the first of Ministry’s six Grammy Award nominations for the opening track, “N.W.O.” — and the 1996’s Filth Pig , which peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard 200. Angst-filled and politically pointed, Ministry became a vanguard of industrial rock, with Jourgensen as majordomo, launching side projects such as Revolting Cocks and Lard and providing the groundwork for the all-star collective Pigface. Jourgensen, however, balks at the industria