Has Hell frozen over? For years, Ministry‘s Al Jourgensen has disavowed his 1983 debut, With Sympathy, as sugary synthpop garbage. So it may come as a surprise to fans of the band that Ministry will be playing songs from With Sympathy and their second album, 1986’s darker and more industrial Twitch, at the 2024 Cruel World Festival.
Jourgensen has actually been hinting this year that this might happen, saying that frequent tourmate Gary Numan had given him an idea to rework early songs and re-own them, so to speak. “We’re doing ‘Revenge’… this version that we have, it’s going to be different,” he told Yahoo! Entertainment this summer. “Let’s turn it from this synthpop thing into a metal arena-rock song… and then we’ll take it from there and see where it goes… If we can make it sound the way I want it, when I originally came up with these songs, then yes, I will do [a full tour behind the release]. If not, I won’t. … So, we’re working our way towards putting a bow on the whole thing and calling it a career. And then everyone can leave me the fuck alone so I can do what the fuck I want.”
We’ll see how it all shakes out at Cruel World on May 11. We also might hear some of those With Sympathy songs before that as Ministry and Gary Numan will be on tour together this spring with Front Line Assembly. That tour hits NYC at Terminal 5 on March 19.
Listen to With Sympathy below.
Gary Numan will also be at Cruel World 2024, playing his 1979 album The Pleasure Principle in full. Check out the full lineup here.
