Ministry Is Dead

Al Jourgensen discusses Ministry's final tour, his distaste for the Bush dynasty, and the upcoming REVCO album. You also get to meet his dogs, Lemmy and Ozzy.

Since 1981, Alain Jourgensen has acted as ringleader for arguably the most influential American industrial band, Ministry. With the release of With Sympathy in 1983, Ministry became an instant, rough alternative to British synth-pop acts, such as OMD and Depeche Mode. But Jourgensen was not satisfied and later referred to the album as an "abortion of an album." With 1986's Twitch, it became ear-splittingly obvious that a much darker beast lay beneath the synthesizer veneer of Ministry. This was especially clear if you listened closely to the album's three-song, 12-minutes-and-15-seconds finale, "Where You At Now?/Crash & Burn/Twitch (Version II)."

Then, in October of 1988, Jourgensen changed industrial music forever with the release of The Land of Rape and Honey. The album's first single "Stigmata" killed off any remaining melodic synth-pop leanings of Ministry and ushered in a frighteningly prophetic vision of the future of music. Degraded industrial rhythms, distorted metallic guitar, atonal synths, and synthetic vocals that broadcasted antiestablishment, as well as often antilife, lyrics drove Ministry's sound straight through the cerebral cortex, causing the mind's eye to see red. Ministry's metal-tinged industrial music would continue to get more aggressive with subsequent releases, as was most evident on 1989's The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, as well as 1992's Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs.

During the past four years, Ministry has continued to release albums that carry on in the tradition of old, but with a clear agenda: to humiliate and protest the 43rd and current President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush.

Alain Jourgensen sat down with MP3.com on the eve of Ministry's final San Francisco performance at the historic Fillmore. He discussed the group's 26-year history, Ministry's 11th and final album, The Last Sucker, recording with the Revolting Cocks, his record label 13th Planet, our society's current political nightmare, and his dogs Lemmy and Ozzy.