Sayonara, Suckers

For all his bluster, Jourgensen says he's already received, shall we say, a friendly nudge from the government. While touring behind the first of his anti-Bush albums, 2004's Houses of the Molé, Jourgensen opened each show with a simulation of himself shooting Bush in the head.

"Immediately after that tour," he says, "we got audited by the IRS. But we were kind of anticipating it, so we had all our papers in a row, all the i's dotted, the t's crossed, and they couldn't get us on anything there."

Vindication, as far as the tax-collectors were concerned. But the process was so time-consuming, Ministry had to cancel a tour — a real pity, as audiences were deprived of the chance to see Ministry with Willie Nelson.

"Yeah," he laughs, "that crowd would have loved us!"

For all his ire — and for the sweeping breadth of Ministry's body of work, which ranges from the light synth textures of the band's 1983 debut full-length With Sympathy and runs through industrial milestones like The Land of Rape and Honey and The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste to the quasi-metal locomotive guitar drive of Psalm 69 and Filth Pig to now — Jourgensen has made the head-scratching decision to bring the band to a close with... what he describes as a "party album" of cover songs.

On Cover Up, the current incarnation of the band, which features three past and present members of Prong, including thrash guitar innovator Tommy Victor, the band covers such gems as "Radar Love," "Mississippi Queen," "Space Truckin'," and "Bang A Gong."

In a word: Huh?

"Man does not live by anger alone," Jourgensen deadpans, this time not laughing. "We had some fun on this cover record. We wanted to go out with that as opposed to all the yelling and fist-shaking and all that shit. We're not completely obsessed. A lot of people are starting to think that. We can actually be fun too."