Pioneering industrial band Ministry is done. Take it from founder Al Jourgensen: 'It's time to go'
NEW YORK (AP) — Before there was Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson or Fear Factory or Rammstein, before the term industrial rock was being used to describe music that combines electro-collages of avant-garde mechanical sounds with that of rock ‘n’ roll and metal: There was Ministry. And after 45 years, the pioneering band is calling it quits.
Founder Al Jourgensen, the group's mastermind and sole consistent member, wants you to know he really means it's over — done, finished, goodbye — after the release of their 17th album “Hate To Go — Take Out Or Delivery” on Oct. 30 and a tour to follow.
“It's time to go,” he told The Associated Press from his home outside Los Angeles. “Everyone says it’s their last tour and they're back the next year. Or they say it’s the last tour and they’re back for the next 20 years. It's The Rolling Stones playing into their 90s. How much money do you need? How much, like, adoration?”
For his band, this really is the end. There are a few reasons for that.
The music industry has changed, for one, and Jourgensen and his band do not see Ministry progressing within its algorithmic framework. And there are sociological and political grounds for the decision: “We’ve been yabbering about the same stuff for 45 years. Nothing’s changed,” he says. “It has gotten worse, and so it’s time for a new generation to carry the torch because they’re not listening to our message.”
The band has long released songs with strong anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist sentiments, and that continues everywhere on “Hate to Go,” from the heavy-as-heck “Voices of Hate” to the propulsive “Delete,” which takes aim at the ways in which endless scrolling and social media erode attention and reinforce negativity.
The issue with speaking truth to power, of course, is that at some point “every canary in a coal mine dies,” Jourgensen says with a smile.
“We’re quite happy with our decision” to call it quits, he adds. “We are quite happy with our career.”
When a band takes ownership over their own end, something interesting happens: A final album can become a statement, not a funeral — a bow on the end of a spectacular career. For Jourgensen, there were a few things that just needed to happen on “Hate to Go.” Bassist Paul “Ion” Barker, Jourgensen’s bandmate in Ministry and Revolting Cocks from 1986 to 2004, was welcomed back into the fold for the album's final track, “We're Still Here.”
And sonically, the album needed to reflect their multidecade run, to sound like a summation of Ministry without leaning into easy parody. “It has elements of hardcore, it has elements of ambience, it has your usual social commentary and your snapshot of society at the time,” he says. “It’s a perfect Ministry album. It’s like a greatest hits album without having any hits. It’s just beautifully wrapped.”
But it also sounds like the future, like so many Ministry albums before it. For some of the songs as well as the music videos for “Hate to Go,” Jourgensen utilized artificial intelligence, perhaps most controversially employing the new technology to simulate celebrity voices — most effectively, that of President Donald Trump on the no-holds-barred “Grifter.”
“It’s a very dichotomous feeling for me,” he says of applying the polarizing tech. “We’re fighting fire with fire. Trump puts out his little AI videos every day and we put out our AI videos.”
Think of it as similar to early Ministry experiments. “I remember when we started doing tape cutups, very similar to like William Burroughs and Brion Gysin … on celluloid to do our music in a metal landscape. That was exciting, back at the time,” he says.
Using AI was yet another tool in a unique application, but one he found to be unsettling.
It's a topic that comes up quite a bit on the record, like in “Singularity,” a reference to the technological idea that AI may one day surpass human cognitive abilities and recursively self-improve.
“It doesn’t seem so science fiction anymore,” he says. “The tiger is out in the lab, outside of the cage, and they can’t control it.”
Ministry will officially throw in the towel on Oct. 30, 2027 — one year after the release of “Hate to Go” — with a huge blowout concert in Los Angeles. Jourgensen assures there will be tons of special guests — a “fun mic drop” — but attendees will have to wait and be surprised to see who will show up.
After that, well, he's got other plans. “I am the Greta Garbo of industrial,” Jourgensen jokes, referencing the great actor who retired young and lived reclusively in her final decades. “I have a plot of land a couple miles away from my house where I’m just going to herd goats and deny I was ever in a band.”
As far as legacy goes? That's not something he has spent a lot of time thinking about, either. “Everyone’s always asking me like, ‘Well, what do you want Ministry to be remembered by?’ And the whole point is, I don't,” he says. “I don’t want them to remember us. It’s time for somebody new, and it’s time to get out. We did what we could.”
Or, even more simply put: “Later!” he cheers. “Hate to go!”
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