Al Jourgensen said he’d never do it – and yet here we are. Stranger things have happened in 2025, but Al finally dusting off hits from With Sympathy and playing them live is pretty up there.
On May 4, Ministry will head to Dallas at The Factory in Deep Ellum to celebrate The Squirrely Years, the name Al has given to the period of time when Ministry began as a synth pop band and released hits like “Work For Love” and “I’m Not An Effigy” and of course the goth anthem “Everyday Is Halloween.” But as the saying goes, time heals all and Al is ready to embrace the past and play the hits live.
It all comes on the heels of Ministry releasing the accompanying The Squirrely Years album this past March on Cleopatra Records, in which he reexamined his long-dormant synth pop hits and gave them a fresh polish 40 years later. That includes the first-ever video for “Everyday Is Halloween” – see it here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTISF4ZwjMg
“Since I hated my early stuff for decades, I decided to take ownership of it and do it right,” Al has shared.
In addition to Al, the live band includes John Bechdel (keyboards), Monte Pittman and Cesar Soto (guitars), Pepe Clarke Magaña (drums) and Paul D’Amour (bass). Opening band support will come from Ministry’s old-school comrades, including Nitzer Ebb for the first half of the tour, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult for the second half of the tour; and Die Krupps on all dates.
About MinistryBorn in 1981 in Chicago, Ministry has been the lifetime passion project of founder Al Jourgensen, considered to be the pioneer of industrial music. In its early days, Ministry was identifiable by its heavy synth-pop material in line with the new sounds and technology that were being developed in the ‘80s. Ministry’s output began with four 12” singles on Wax Trax! Records in 1981 before the first LP With Sympathy in 1983 via Arista Records. As time progressed however, so did Ministry, quickly developing a harsher, and more stylized sound that the band soon became infamous for on seminal albums Twitch (1986), The Land of Rape and Honey (1988), and The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste (1989). With the release of Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and The Way to Suck Eggs (1992), Ministry hit an all-time high in the mainstream musical realm and received its first Grammy nomination. In total, Ministry has been nominated for a Grammy award six times. Eight more albums would follow before an indefinite break in 2013, only to be unearthed again in 2018 with AmeriKKKant, continuing to reflect Jourgensen’s views on the frightening state of society and politics. The 2021 album Moral Hygiene marked a new creative era of Jourgensen and the band. Ministry’s 16th studio album, HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES, was released March 1, 2024 via Nuclear Blast Records.
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