The C.ell Youtube channel has uploaded video of MINISTRY‘s entire March 1 performance at Roseland Theater in Portland, Oregon. You can now watch the video below.
MINISTRY‘s 16th studio album, “Hopiumforthemasses”was released on March 1 via Nuclear Blast Records.
MINISTRY founder and leader Al Jourgensen is joined in the band’s current lineup by John Bechdel (keyboards),Mount Pittman and Cesar Soto (guitars),Roy Mayorga (drums) and Paul D’Amour (bass).
“Hopiumforthemasses” also has a slew of special guest contributors, including GOGOL BORDELLO‘s Eugene Hutzlongtime collaborator and LARD companion Jello Biafra and CORROSION OF CONFORMITY frontman Pepper Keenan.
“Just like you or anybody else, I’m simply a passenger in this lifetime,” he said Jourgensen. “I’m watching social changes, political changes, and economic changes, and I comment on them because I do have a First Amendment right. A lot of people say artists and athletes should shut up and play ball. No, I’m on this trip too. If I see something, I say something. That reflects on where each album goes. Instead of staying sedentary and singing about broken relationships, inner turmoil, or whatever is hurting this week, I comment on what’s going on from the perspective of a fellow passenger.”
“Hopiumforthemasses” It is available in three vinyl variants, a CD jewelcase and digital/streaming platforms. The vinyl variants include: green with yellow splatter (in stores everywhere); blue with pink splatter (nuclear blast exclusive); red with white splatter (band/tour exclusive).
Last June, Jourgensen told Yahoo! Entertainment ‘s Lyndsey Parker that he was close to putting MINISTRY to bed, more than 40 years after he launched the band in his former hometown of Chicago.
“My career is winding down with MINISTRY“,” Jourgensen he said. “I’m gonna stop MINISTRY in an album or two. Tengo que. “I have other things I want to do.”
He continued: “My public and my band are all in agreement that we are being shackled by… We are taking our genre to the farthest limits it can go, and we’re happy with that. And we’ll stop when it’s time instead of keeping going and trying to just recreate the same stuff. We keep trying to push further. So, I figure there’s only maybe one more MINISTRY album to go. Maybe two, but probably one.”
Jourgensen added: “I have other things to do. I have projects that I’m working on with various people. I have film scores. And MINISTRYnow we’re being held to the standard of this new MINISTRY of, okay, either push further or do the most popular stuff over and over and over and over, which we have with ‘Psalm 69’ or something like that. I’m tired of that. We’re there tired of that. Well, we are. The fans aren’t. So I think this next year or two is going to be really transformative in the sense that I’m wrapping a bow on my entire career and saying, ‘Drop mic. Thank you. Thank you for buying our t-shirts… Good night. And now I hope you follow me on my next journey.”
To the revealed that one of MINISTRY‘s final recordings will be a ‘remake’ of the band’s first album, “With Sympathy”, which he claims he had little control over, with the record company at the time dictating its direction. According to Jourgensena new version of “With Sympathy” would “tie a bow on the whole thing, and just say, ‘Drop mic. Good night. I’m outta here.'”
This is not the first time Jourgensen you have vowed to make a “final” MINISTRY album. 2007’s “The Last Sucker” was supposed to be the band’s last-ever LP. Then, while working on other projects, inspiring riffs were born that would eventually become 2012’s “Relapse”. Later that year, Jourgensen began work on yet another MINISTRY album with longtime guitarist and collaborator Mike Scaccia. Three days after leaving the MINISTRY sessions in El Paso, in the early hours of December 23, 2012, Scaccia suffered heart failure onstage while performing with his other band, RIGOR MORTISand was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Scaccia‘s death both devastated and motivated Jourgensen to return the studio to put the final touches on what they had started in memory of his best friend. The result was 2013’s “From Beer To Eternity”. Two more albums followed, 2018’s “AmeriKKKant” and 2021’s “Moral Hygiene”.
