You’ve said that this is the last Ministry album because of the intensity the band requires. Why does it have to be so intense? I think it’s the fact that I get kind of anal retentive about Ministry as opposed to my side projects. The side projects I just let fly; we get drunk and we jam and we put out records. But Ministry takes so much thought on making it right, it’s almost like having a job.
What makes a song a Ministry song? It’s got to be either sonically challenging or lyrically chal- lenging. That’s the only two criteria that I have. Just to make sure that the stuff pushes the boundary a little bit. Whereas the other stuff, you know, I don’t care. It’s just me and a bunch of friends jam- ming in a studio that I own so it’s not like we have to meet deadlines. Ministry, it gets a little bit different. Mikey [Scaccia], my guitar player, talked me into doing this record. We were doing the Buck Satan record after I got out of the hospital and we just started jamming on some metal stuff in between coun- try songs. At the end of the Buck Satan record, Mikey’s like, “We need to release this, this is too good.” I was against it at first because we only had six [songs], which meant we’d have to do another five or six. But he finally talked me into it because my health’s hold- ing out and everything’s been good for at least the last year-and-a-half. No more blood pouring out of my nose and mouth and ass. So I decided, well, what the fuck?
Are you scared of death? No! I’ve died three times, and twice I’ve left my body. The last time was the first time I didn’t leave my body, which is what kind of freaked me out and got me into gear about getting unfinished business done.
Wait, wouldn’t not leaving your body be a good thing?
They let my wife Angie into the emergency room after they had defibrillated me, and I just remember looking at her and saying, “Third time’s a charm, baby. I think I’m going.” At least when I was hovering above my own body the first two times, I knew that it was time to get back. This time, it was like a dead phone call, like an unplugged phone. … But I’ve been puking up blood for about eight years now on the road. That’s why I wanted to call it quits. I just finally got sick of it, man. I was not healthy and I couldn’t figure out why. I thought puking up blood was part of just being on a rock tour. So I never complained, I just did my puking. And then after a tour, it would usually get better after a couple of weeks but after The Last Sucker tour, it didn’t get better. I went into seizures and I bled out. It was definitely time. But the paramedics and the doctors fixed me up and now I’m back.
Is it the unfinished business that keeps bringing you back or some- thing else? I don’t know. It’s made me spiritual. I do think that there’s a supreme being that has a master plan, I ac- tually do. I’m not affiliated with any religion but I do feel like there’s pur- poses in life and that there’s fate,
positive energy, negative energy, dark matter, light matter…there’s all sorts of contrasts in the universe. I just know that the last time [I died] really freaked me out. The first time, I didn’t even get defibrillated. I got mouth-to-mouth by my friend Phildo [Phil Owens] from the Skatenigs, and I was hovering above my body watching and I thought, “This is wrong, man. This is like man-on-man sex. This is weirding me out.” I mean, it’s fine for other people but, for me, I was freaked out. So I went back into my body, woke up, punched him in the face and called him a rapist. [Laughs] I
thought he was just fiddling about with me while I was passed out.
With this being the last Ministry album and Buck Satan being more of a fun project, where will you funnel your darkness? Uh, probably at home. [Laughs] Probably my wife will see me brooding around, yelling at CNN and MSNBC ’cause I won’t even watch Fox. I mean, I’ll throw something at the TV.
Do you even need that kind of outlet anymore? No, because I’ve got enough personal life experience now where I don’t need a muse like George W. Bush. I needed that at that time. I didn’t know where to go. After [bassist Paul] Barker left the band and I did Houses of the Molé [2004], I found my muse. I found something that I was really pissed about. But nowadays, this new record is half political and half personal. Buck Satan really helped me with the personal part, to be able to sing about my own personal life experiences.
Was Ministry’s move from a colder industrial sound to harder thrash metal tied to Barker’s departure? I think that’s part of it. First of all, the guy couldn’t play a fast bass riff to save his life. I’m working with all these other people who are total thrash-heads [now]. Even on “Thieves,” I replaced his bass ’cause he couldn’t play it. We definitely sped up the tempo when I got back with Mikey, [guitarist] Tommy Victor, [bassist] Tony Campos, and [bassist] Casey Orr.
Some of your fans would love for you to return to the sound of The Land of Rape and Honey and The Mind is a Terrible Taste albums. Would you?
From The Other Side: Al Jourgensen and (left) guitarist Tommy Victor on stage during Ministry’s 2008 C-U-LaTour.
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