Al Jourgensen

In 2016 March, Jourgensen noted he has a project with Arabian Prince; this collaboration was later confirmed for a new Ministry album.

Jourgensen and his Ministry bandmate Paul Barker worked as a music production team under the names Hypo Luxa and Hermes Pan, producing their own work as well as other Wax Trax! Records acts. Jourgensen also produced music for Reverend Horton Heat, Skinny Puppy, Dessau, Skrew, Rigor Mortis, The Blackouts, and DethRok. Jourgensen's recording complex for the 13th Planet label was located within his former home in El Paso, Texas, U.S.

Jourgensen's autobiography, Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen, was released in July 2013.

Throughout the years, Jourgensen has amassed a large number of tattoos. In 2012, he underwent facial piercings after a bet with his daughter; she called him a "pussy" for not having any piercings while Jourgensen called her the same thing for not having any tattoos. They then decided to have their tattoos and piercings done respectively to create a "pact." He had 16 facial piercings done in one sitting.

In a November 2008 issue of Hustler Magazine, Jourgensen announced that Ministry was officially finished, as the band "[took] up so much time" and releasing new albums was difficult. He also explained that he was responsible for six other bands and could complete seven albums within a year when he was not working on new Ministry material. However, despite Jourgensen's insistence that Ministry would never return, a reunion was announced on August 7, 2011. A new album, entitled Relapse, was released on March 26, 2012.

A number of his songs also appear in other films, such as Wicked Lake (2008)—produced by Fever Dreams and ZP Studios—for which he composed the entire soundtrack that was released on his own 13th Planet record label—he also makes a small appearance in the film as an art school teacher.

The band have changed lineups several times. RevCo currently features Jourgensen (guitars, keyboards, programming, background vocals, producer), Josh Bradford (vocals, background vocals), Sin Quirin (guitars, bass, keyboards) and Clayton Worbeck (keyboards, programming, mixing, bass). Their seventh album Sex-O Olympic-O, which was produced by Jourgensen at his studio, was released on his 13th Planet label in March 2008. The follow-up album Got Cock? was released in March 2010 on the same label. A remix album of Got Cock?, titled Got Mixxx?, was released in 2011.

Ministry's next albums, Rio Grande Blood (2006) and The Last Sucker (2007), as well as the 2006 Revolting Cocks album Cocked and Loaded, were released on Jourgensen's new record label, 13th Planet Records, which he formed after falling out with the mainstream agendas of major industry labels.

Jourgensen's singing style has varied throughout the years. On Ministry's early releases such as With Sympathy and Twitch, he sang with a fake British accent, which he regrets. Inspired by The 13th Floor Elevators, Jourgensen started utilizing vocal effects beginning with The Land of Rape and Honey to distort his voice using Eventide. In 2006, starting with Rio Grande Blood, Jourgensen switched to a more thrash metal approach.

In 1995, police raided Ministry's Texas headquarters and Jourgensen was arrested for possession of heroin. He received a five-year probation sentence. Jourgensen was dependent upon heroin for twenty years. Jourgensen kicked his heavy drug (heroin, methadone, crack, pills) habit, and as of 2019, he limited his intake to beer, marijuana, and psilocybin mushrooms.

The band broke into the mainstream with 1992's Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs album. Its opening track, "N.W.O.", was nominated for a 1993 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance, losing to Nine Inch Nails' "Wish". However, its next album, Filth Pig (1996), divided their fan base, leading to a commercial decline that became evident when Warner Bros. Records dropped them from the label in 2001.

Jourgensen was married to Patty Marsh from 1984 to 1995 and the relationship produced one daughter. In 2002, he married Angelina Lukacin. In July 2014, he announced that they were divorced.

Revolting Cocks, also known as RevCo, is an American industrial rock band that began as a musical side-project for Richard 23 of Front 242, Luc van Acker, and Jourgensen. The band took their name after being involved in a fight in a Chicago bar in 1983: Jourgensen, Richard 23 and Van Acker, celebrating the formation of their new band with a few drinks, ended the evening in a brawl, with bar stools thrown through the windows. As he ejected the trio, the owner—a man who Jourgensen recalls was named Dess—shouted, "I'm calling the police! You guys are a bunch of revolting cocks!" The trio decided to use the name for their band.

Jourgensen formed Ministry in 1981 after leaving Special Affect, a new wave/synthpop band (notably including Frankie Nardiello, founding member (as Groovie Mann) of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and drummer Harry Rushakoff of Concrete Blonde). Early singles by Ministry and Jourgensen's other projects were released on Wax Trax! Records. He also produced Skinny Puppy's Rabies album. During that time, Jourgensen befriended Nivek Ogre, who later toured with Ministry.

During the late 1980s, Jourgensen started a short-lived side project named 1000 Homo DJs, under the pseudonym Buck Satan. 1000 Homo DJs released two singles, including a cover of Black Sabbath's "Supernaut." Also in 1989, Jourgensen was involved in Acid Horse, a collaboration between the members of Ministry and Cabaret Voltaire. In 2015, Jourgensen announced that he started "a speed metal project" named Surgical Meth Machine with engineer and longtime collaborator Sam D'Ambruoso.

Born in Havana shortly before the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Jourgensen moved to the United States with his family at age of three, and was raised mainly in Chicago and Breckenridge, Colorado. He developed an interest in music at a young age, and was involved in several short-lived bands, as well as briefly performing in the backing band of drag performer Divine. Jourgensen formed Ministry in 1981 in Chicago and received significant attention from music press regarding the band's 1983 debut studio album, With Sympathy. Jourgensen's subsequent releases in the 1980s, most prominently Ministry's The Land of Rape and Honey (1988) and The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989), showcased his stylistic transition; in the early 1990s, he achieved mainstream success with Ministry's fifth studio album, Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs (1992). The next few years were marked by publicity surrounding Jourgensen's substance abuse which negatively affected his creative output and resulted in a period of severe depression; during this time, Jourgensen and Ministry appeared in the 2001 Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. In 2005, Jourgensen established his own record label, 13th Planet Records, through which several Ministry records, among others, were released until the early 2010s. He published his autobiography, Ministry: The Lost Gospels ... co-authored with Jon Wiederhorn, in 2013.

Alain David Jourgensen (born Alejandro Ramírez Casas; October 9, 1958) is a Cuban-American singer-songwriter, musician and music producer. Closely related with the independent record label Wax Trax! Records, Jourgensen has an active musical career that spans four decades, and is best known as the frontman and lyricist of the industrial rock band Ministry, which he founded in 1981 and of which he remains the only constant member. He was also primary musician of several Ministry-related projects, such as Revolting Cocks, Lard, Buck Satan and the 666 Shooters. He has also produced and/or recorded with numerous other artists, including The Reverend Horton Heat, Prong, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, The Blackouts, Alan Vega, Iggy Pop, Adrian Sherwood, Jello Biafra and others. Jourgensen is regarded as being one of the most prominent figures of industrial music, influencing numerous other groups and musicians, both in alternative and industrial-associated acts.

Alejandro Ramírez Casas was born in Havana on October 9, 1958, the son of Margarita "Maggie" Brouwer (born c. 1942) and Gualberto Ramiro Casas (born c. 1936), and the grandson of Julio Brouwer, a biologist. Jourgensen's extended family has Dutch and Spanish heritage. In 1961, following the fall of Fulgencio Batista's regime and rise of Fidel Castro to power, his family relocated to Florida. Soon after in 1964, Margarita Brouwer married Ed Jourgensen—a stock car driver and mechanic for Formula One driver Dan Gurney—and adopted his surname for herself and her son.

At his 57th birthday listening party in Chicago he announced a new project called, SMM or Surgical Meth Machine. In an interview with In The Loop Magazine, Jourgensen stated, "I can't wait to get this record out. If you're a fan of Ministry, you're gonna freak out on this. It's got the whole range of my career as a musician in it even sound of earlier stuff from the beginning."