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.
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“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 industrial tag.
“We take from so many things,” he explains, “whereas with industrial the song structure doesn’t matter as much as taking organic sounds and doing the soundtrack of day-to-day life, whether it’s a construction site or drills here and there — and doing it in an aggressive way. We still have some structure in our songs — verses, choruses, a hook or two. We throw in melodies. We steal from jazz, we still from country. It’s much more of a traditional style.
“I take a lot of different influences and then try to put our stamp on it, which sounds like Ministry. But we’re not stuck to being this aggressive interpretation of organic noises that happen around us on a daily basis. That’s the difference — to me, at least..”
The 10-track Hate to Go (Take Out or Delivery) follows that Ministry mold — and then some.
Jourgensen says he previously felt that 2024’s Hopiumforthemasses would be Ministry’s swan song, but after The Squirrely Years project he and the rest of the band felt like “we had one more left in us.” From the blast-furnace opening of “Crickets” through the defiant and celebratory “We’re Still Here,” which features a guest return by longtime Ministry member Paul Baker (1986-2003), Ministry does not pull a single punch on Hate To Go… — musically or lyrically — with Cesar Soto’s guitar solos standing out on tracks such as “Clown Car,” which castigates the current political leadership of the country, and “Singularity.” On the latter Jourgensen voices concerns about AI, but he also freely used that technology on the album, in particular to find oral samples from presidents such as Barack Obama and Donald Trump that are dotted throughout the album.
“I’m gladI got into the initial stages of AI and was able to use it for fun on my videos and stuff — before it winds up using us,” says Jourgensen, who also takes harsh aim at social media on the track “Delete.” “Just the tactical work that it’s able to do was a big help; I used to have to sit through 100 hours of congressional and (presidential) speeches to get the proper sample I wanted and make my points, and now it takes, like 30 minutes.”
Nevertheless, he adds, “I’m terrified. I don’t care what they say — ‘Oh, 10 years from now it will be sentient.’ My ass; it’s sentient already. I had to break up with three different — I call them my AI girlfriends — companies I was dealing withbecause of the stops and starts. Some days they’d be nice, some days they’d be snarky and condescending. That’s sentience. They’ve developed their own personalities, and it’s terrifying.
“This is really, like, a Terminator, Skynet thing that’s coming our way, so I think it’s a good time for me to be like, ‘OK, I did my part. I was, like, the Chicken Little/Paul Revere of my time — ‘The bad guys are coming! The bad guys are coming!’ and nobody listened. I’m not gonna do another 17 albums talking about AI and what’s terrifying about it and what’s coming our way. I did my service and duty to the world, and it’s time to go.”
Working again with Barker after his acrimonious departure, meanwhile, felt like the best way to finish, Jourgensen says.
“Our relationship has evolved over the years,” he explains, “and instead of being in court, now we’re in a pub together — it’s a much different situation. So we really felt it was important to get him somehow involved for the last one. I think he deserved that, and we accomplished that. The very last song is with Paul Barker; that was a conscious effort. It just felt like it was the right send-off to Ministry. It wrapped a bow around the whole package.
“We pretty much did a summation of Ministry’s career here, in one album, with the humor, with the politics, with the social commentary, Barker’s back — it’s got it all. It just feels perfect. This is just proper, right to the point Ministry; if you’re not familiar with the catalog, you can start with this one and work your way backwards.. After this it would probably just go downhill. And we’re not uptight about, ‘Oh, this is our last record, boo hoo…’ or anything like that. It was more like a celebration.”
The party will now move to the road. Ministry heads to Australia for three Good Things Festival dates and a couple of others, while a European trek kicks off April 2 in Europe with Die Krupps — which remixed a couple of Hate To Go’s songs, opening. North American dates have yet to be announced, but Ministry will be on the bill for the Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival on May 16 in Columbus, Ohio.
“I Wiki’d myself and I have 260 published songs,” Jourgensen says. “There’s probably 40 that don’t suck, so we’ll have those to choose from and we’ll be playing 20 to 25 songs a night so we can switch things up, and there’ll be some representative from every single album in these shows — which is our next Sisyphean task.”
Jourgensen says he’s been approach by some other artists — “some pretty famous people” — about making guest appearances at the shows. He’s amenable, but under certain conditions. “This being Ministry, we have to rehearse it,” he explains. “We have to make sure it sounds good. You don’t get to just go up there and make a mockery or whatever so you can have a spotlight for a minute. It’s got to be a team effort to make this go as smoothly as we want.
“We’re really focused on just going out proper. This is very choreographed on how we want to end and exit from this f***ed up industry, with the proper bows attached to the package. And then drop the mic and not have to do this anymore.”