Ministry’s ‘AmeriKKKant,’ singer make views crystal clear on Trump, America

Al Jourgensen knew he could pull no punches when he decided that he’d make the new Ministry album a scathing assault on Donald J. Trump – and, by extension, the country and political system that put him in office.

“Sometimes you’ve got to slap somebody in the face to get their attention,” Jourgensen said in a phone interview. “I think Ministry’s been doing that for two decades, more than two decades. I have a 30-year track record of being pretty politically active.

“This isn’t jumping on anyone’s bandwagon. I have the bonafides to be political, to make a political album. But it’s so much deeper than that,” he said. “It’s the system that makes us do it over and over. It’s Trump this time. Next time it could be somebody worse.”

Ministry’s “AmeriKKKant,” one of the few true protest albums to be released since Trump’s election, finds Jourgensen in full voice, decrying America’s ills – as he has done during Republican administrations for more than three decades.

Take, for example, “Antifa,” the first single from “AmeriKKKant,” a biting embrace of the anti-facist movement that, Jourgensen said, hadn’t been noticed in the United States before the rise of Trump.

“We never had it in this country,” he said. “People are oblivious to it. We’ve had fascist presidents before, probably all of them. … At least they were in the closet. Now we’ve got one who’s overtly fascist Mussolini-style.”

But Jourgensen says, and a listen to the album proves it, that it’s not just about Trump. It is about the decline of America – from the economic divide between the 1% and the rest of the population and “fake news” to the desire for a “Wargasm,” the eroding moral and ethical values of politicians and, importantly, voters acquiesence to all of the above.

“That’s the point of the whole album – what the hell did we do to ourselves?” Jourgensen said. “This isn’t just about Trump. It’s about the whole thing, of voting against ourselves, electing B-movie actors, Reagan, rich oil tycoons and their sons, the Bushes. We keep going for it and going for it. It’s puzzling to me…

“There’s Trump material. It’s low-hanging fruit. I did an anti-Bush trilogy and, by the end, I almost felt sorry for him. He was in over his head. This is about us and what we’ve done to let this happen.”

Jourgensen said he didn’t intend to do another political album when the band initially went into the studio in 2016. In fact, he didn’t really intend to make a Ministry album at all.

“A couple things happened on the road to this,” Jourgensen said. “My best friend, my guitarist Mike Scaccia, died. At that point, I didn’t know if I wanted to do Ministry again. At least I had to sit back and pay respect to my best friend. I didn’t want to do a Ministry record.”

But a tour was already scheduled when Scaccia died of a heart attack while onstage with his other band, Rigor Mortis.

“Contractually, we had to tour as Ministry, I was bound to make this happen,” Jourgensen said. “But after I put the band together and we played a couple weeks, I was thinking, ‘This sounds pretty good, it feels really good.’ So I booked time in a studio to make a record.”

The band clicked immediately in the studio, finishing 75% to 80% of the album in a week.

“Then for the next six months, I textured it, layered it, did all the vocals and stuff,” Jourgensen said. “But I still wasn’t sure that I wanted it to be a Ministry record. Then Nov. 9, 2016, happened, and I went, ‘This is the time to do a Ministry record. We’ve got some ’splaining to do, Lucy.”

Now Ministry is on the road opening for Slayer on that band’s farewell tour – Primus and Ministry open for Slayer at Spokane Arena on Sunday night. The band has lots of options for its setlist. “I’ve got 35 years worth of material to pick from,” Jourgensen said.

That 35 years of material can’t help but survey the career of the industrial music pioneers. Formed in 1981 in Chicago, Ministry was largely responsible for the popularization of industrial dance music with its punk-rooted aggressions and roaring heavy metal guitars over dancey beats bringing together metal, alternative and dance audiences.

“Expect it to be a Pink Floyd meets Punk Floyd experience,” Jourgensen said of the show.