Industrial metal pioneers MINISTRY have announced they are disbanding after 45 years, closing out the project with a final studio album, "Hate To Go (Take Out Or Delivery)," due October 30 via Cleopatra Records, alongside a farewell "Goodbye" world tour.
Founder Al Jourgensen did not soften the announcement. "I'm fucking done. I'm proud of what I've accomplished," he said, adding with characteristic bluntness, "It's time to herd goats." The 17th and final MINISTRY studio album will arrive across vinyl, CD, cassette, digital and box-set formats, with a ten-track lineup that closes on "We're Still Here," featuring returning bassist Paul Barker. The album's current lineup rounds out with guitarists Monte Pittman and Cesar Soto, bassist Paul D'Amour, sampler/synth player John Bechdel and drummer Pepe Clarke Magaña.
Lead single "Burned Out" arrived July 24 via Bandcamp, paired with a music video mixing live action and animation created by Joshua Bradford, Jourgensen's former REVOLTING COCKS bandmate. The track's caustic, machine-driven aggression keeps the record firmly in the industrial-metal lane MINISTRY has occupied since Jourgensen founded the band in Chicago in 1981, a project that went on to help define the genre alongside acts like NINE INCH NAILS and FEAR FACTORY.
MINISTRY's remaining 2026 U.S. dates include Red Rocks in Morrison, Colorado on September 15, Louder Than Life in Louisville on September 20, Chicago's Salt Shed on October 3 and Sick New World Texas in Fort Worth on October 24. The international leg of the "Goodbye" tour kicks off in Europe in spring 2027 with support from DIE KRUPPS, running 21 dates through a Helsinki finale on May 1.
With "Hate To Go (Take Out Or Delivery)" set to close out a catalog stretching back more than four decades, MINISTRY's farewell run gives fans a final chance to see one of industrial music's most influential and confrontational acts before Jourgensen brings the project to a close on his own terms.