WELCOME BACK
Ministry return as a band rather than just Al Jourgensen, and there’s venom in the new album.
THE UNSINKABLE AL Jourgensen has captained industrial rockers Ministry for more than 40 years now, and has survived severe drug and alcohol addiction to emerge as a voluble campaigner for social justice and systemic change. Ministry’s new album HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES, featuring cameos from Jello Biafra, Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hutz and Corrosion Of Conformity’s Pepper Keenan – is boisterous and ballsy, covering dirty politics, climate change, corporate bullies, media misogyny and much more.
There’s a lot of socio-political venom in the songs on the new album, a prime example being Goddamn White Trash. As the world gets crazier and crazier, HOPIUM is trying to address societal changes we’re going through. Pepper [Keenan] sang back-ups on Goddamn White Trash. He’s from the Deep South, and we had a really long, deep conversation before he agreed to do it. He’s like: “Are you making fun of us?” Absolutely not. I’m trying to make people aware of the lack of education, the surplus of disinformation and how it affects different regions of the country. The message is we’re all in this together, because we’re all being fucked by everybody. I sent him a rough mix of that track afterwards. He called me from his porch somewhere in Louisiana, with all his hillbilly buddies, and they’re going: “This is awesome! ”
How come Ministry has returned to the band format for this album?
This current line-up has been together for almost eight years. And as we’ve gained trust in each other we’ve actually become a band in the studio too, rather than it just being me and my engineer, Michael Rozon. So this was a real jam.
Has that been liberating for you?
It’s liberating in that I don’t have to concentrate as much on the ideas and arrangements. I can trust my people to come up with something that Ministry w
