Ministry's Al Jourgensen Says New Album Hate to Go Is the Band's Last
Ministry founder Al Jourgensen has told Billboard that the band's new album will be its last. The record is Hate to Go (Take Out or Delivery), and Ministry will end after a tour supporting it next year. Jourgensen described it as a final album and a final tour.
Cleopatra Records is releasing the album on 30 October 2026, according to the label's announcement. It is Ministry's 17th studio album, meaning a record made in the studio rather than live, and it has 10 tracks.
The band goes back to 1981, when Jourgensen founded it. Ministry made its live debut on New Year's Day 1982. Its first singles came out on Chicago's Wax Trax! Records, a label for the city's post-punk scene, after Jourgensen's time in the band Special Affect. Its 1983 album With Sympathy was released on Arista Records. Many of those songs were reworked for The Squirrely Years, which came out in 2025.
Ministry moved to Sire Records for Twitch in 1986. It followed with The Land of Rape and Honey in 1988 and The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste in 1990. Psalm 69, released in 1992, was certified platinum, the industry's mark for strong sales. Its opening track, "N.W.O.", earned the band the first of its six Grammy Award nominations.
Ministry's 1996 album Filth Pig peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard 200, the US chart that ranks albums by sales and streams. Jourgensen had also once described the 2024 album Hopiumforthemasses as a possible swan song, a term for a final work. That was not the end, and the band kept recording.
For fans, the new album and the tour that follows will be the last chances to hear Ministry's work as a working band. The tour is due next year, after the album's release.
