Ministry release Hate to Go (Take Out or Delivery) tomorrow through Cleopatra Records, and Al Jourgensen has spent four months saying it is the last one.
Ten tracks, forty six minutes, in this order: Crickets, Voice or Hate, Clown Car, We Hate, Delete, Grifter, The White Man Lied, Singularity, Burned Out and We Are Still Here. Two of them have been public since the summer, Burned Out in July and We Hate in August, and both sit in the back half of the record rather than at the front.
The closing song is the one to look at. We Are Still Here brings back Paul Barker, the bassist who shaped the band through their biggest years and left more than two decades ago, which is a pointed way to finish a seventeen album discography.
Whether it finishes anything is a separate question. Jourgensen called it a day after The Last Sucker in 2007 and again after From Beer to Eternity in 2013, and the band is, as the last title says, still here. He sounded more certain about it this time, and the Goodbye Europe dates begin in April.