Al Jourgensen reforms Ministry for ‘Relapse’ album, 2012 concerts in U.S., Europe

Having survived a blood-draining health scare, a clean and sober Al Jourgensen has reunited Ministry three years after vowing he was finished with the industrial-metal juggernaut, and says he’ll record and release a new album dubbed Relapse before the end of the year and play a limited run of U.S. and European concerts in 2012.

In a new interview with British site Metal Hammer, Jourgensen says Ministry’s unlikely resurrection follows a 2010 health scare in which he “bled out 65 percent of my body” from a burst ulcer and flat-lined at the hospital (“I was dead”) before being revived and given a “100 percent blood transfusion.” Now, Jougensen says, he’s quit drinking, smoking and eating meat, and is nine years drug-free: “I’m the healthiest I’ve been in over 20 years.”

The idea to resurrect Ministry — which still managed to release some post-breakup music last year — came this summer while Jourgensen worked on a new record by his Buck Satan side project with on-again, off-again Ministry guitarist Mike Scaccia. As Jourgensen explains, some of the songs he was writing didn’t fit the country-tinged project:

“Mikey was like, ‘Dude these songs are awesome.’ They weren’t country, they were more like Ministry. So he’s coming by in September and Tommy Victor’s coming by in October with Tony Campos and we’re gona finish up and put out another Ministry album by Christmas called Relapse. …  I think this is actually gonna wind up being the fastest and heaviest record I’ve ever done.”

The revived Ministry — also featuring Aaron Rossi and John Bechdel — already has been booked to play the Wacken Open Air festival in Germany next August, and Jourgensen says it’ll be preceded next June by a light U.S. tour, with just four dates planned at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, the Vic Theatre in Chicago, the Ogden Theatre in Denver and the Best Buy Theater in New York City. Club shows and festival dates will follow in Europe.

Jourgensen explains: “The doctors told me to keep it light… We’re gonna do a limited tour, it’ll be like five/six weeks, maybe 20, 21 shows, and we’ll see how it works.”

LINK: Read the full interview at Metal Hammer.

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