MINISTRY Has Eight Songs Already Recorded For Upcoming 'Arena Rock' Album

In a new interview with Metal Edge, MINISTRY leader Al Jourgensen confirmed that he has already commenced work on the follow-up to "Moral Hygiene", which was released last October via Nuclear Blast Records. "We have eight songs recorded right now, and even my engineer went, 'This is total arena rock, dude,'" he said. "And I really feel like after that one, we have one more in us, which would be our 19th album. I don't think I'm gonna hit 20, but I'm pretty certain we're gonna have 19 by the time we're done. So we'll see. I mean, who knows, man? The world is just in such a state of fucking flux. You don't know what's gonna happen next fucking week. But this new record, it's fun stuff."

Asked if he was into any arena rock or hair metal stuff back in the 1980s, Al said: "No, not at all. I didn't know any of... to this day, outside of 'Girls, Girls, Girls' or something, I couldn't even name you a MÖTLEY CRÜE song. That's not something that I would listen to. I'm sure it's really great and all that, but when I say arena rock, I don't mean that this album's going to be a hair-band fucking album. I mean, it's MINISTRY, right? I'm just saying that the chord progressions and the sound of it is just much more… we don't go off on eclectic tangents as much. These are hard-hitting beats that are in your face, and that you could visualize 20,000 people knowing the lyrics to the songs and chanting along. So the music lends itself more towards a larger stadium atmosphere."

MINISTRY's "Industrial Strength" tour kicked off on March 2. In addition to Jourgensen, MINISTRY's touring lineup includes drummer Roy Mayorga, guitarists Cesar Soto and Monte Pittman, bassist Paul D'Amour and keyboardist John Bechdel. Due to overwhelming demand, MINISTRY added 13 new dates with the tour now running through April 18.

"Moral Hygiene" is MINISTRY's 15th studio album and added to many "best of 2021" year-end lists, including Loudwire, Consequence Of Sound, Punk News and XS Rock (where it was ranked the No. 1 album of the year). It features some of the project's strongest and most inspired material to date, the creative masterwork of founder and creator Jourgensen who spent the pandemic pause ruminating on the new world we as a society have found ourselves in — while pondering just what we are going to do about it.

The 10 tracks are a follow-up to 2018's lauded "AmeriKKKant" and put forth Jourgensen's societal manifesto and plea for civilization to get back to a set of standards that lives up to and embraces our humanity. Singles have included "Alert Level" (sounding the alarm on the state society is in),"Good Trouble" (a rallying cry to fight for human rights in homage to civil rights leader John Lewis),"Disinformation" (the dangers of consuming mass media without critical thinking) and "Search And Destroy" (the unique take on THE STOOGES classic). The latter features guitar virtuoso Billy Morrison (Billy Idol, ROYAL MACHINES) who is also heavily featured on a number of songs on the album.