During an interview with Loudwire, Al Jourgensen talked about his plans for the Ministry’s future. His latest update might come as bittersweet for the fans since Al confirmed Ministry will be done after releasing their next album. The frontman explained:
“We have one more. When I [previously said we had one more album left to do], I just finished ‘Hopium.’ So we have one more new record coming out, which I’m re-recruiting an old mate from the early days. Paul Barker is gonna rejoin the band, and we’re gonna record that together, and that will be our last one.”
When it came to the reason behind Al’s decision, he pointed out that Ministry were already at the top of their game and didn’t want to start on the decline. He added:
“There comes a point in time where — there’s only so many notes in a musical scale, there’s only so many things you can do, I think we’ve kind of perfected our genre, whatever genre that is. People like to call it industrial or whatever; I just call it music. But it is certainly our genre. And there comes a point in time where you don’t wanna start on the decline. And we’re all at the right ages.”
Last year, Ministry announced their highly-anticipated 16th studio album ‘Hopiumforthemasses,’ which will be released on March 1, 2024. Jourgensen now confirms there will be only one more Ministry album. However, this wasn’t the first time Al hinted at his retirement plans.
Al Jourgensen’s Earlier Signal Foreshadowed Ministry’s Final Days
After a career spanning for 43-years, Ministry frontmen started to give retirement signals earlier last year. In a 2023 interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Jourgensen mentioned his plans to ‘stop’ Ministry after releasing one or two albums. He also hinted at other projects he wanted to explore outside of his band. Al stated:
“My career is winding down with Ministry. I’m gonna stop Ministry in an album or two. I have to. I have other things I wanna do. … I have other things to do. I have projects that I’m working on with various people. I have film scores.”
You can watch Al Jourgensen’s entire interview with Yahoo Entertainment’s Lyndsey Parker on YouTube below.
