Al Jourgensen has put a shape on the end of Ministry. Hate To Go (Take Out Or Delivery) arrives on 30 October through Cleopatra as the last album, and a farewell tour follows in 2027.
His reasoning is not disappointment. "I figure it's time. We've taken our genre and this band as far as we can go," he told Steve Baltin at Hit Parader, describing the record as the culmination of four decades of ideas and saying he is happy with it.
What he does not want is to make it twice. At 68 he says he has little appetite for repeating himself and suspects the next one would not match this one. "I just think that Ministry has run its course."
There is a good footnote buried in the same conversation. He never meant to sing. Before the early recordings found an audience he wanted to teach history, and when he put the band together he auditioned a run of vocalists because he intended to stay on guitar. Nobody worked out, so he took the microphone, and that accident ran for forty five years from a Chicago synth-pop act to the loudest industrial band in the United States.