MINISTRY Mainman AL JOURGENSEN's SURGICAL METH MACHINE: Lyric Video For 'Rich People Problems' Song

MINISTRY mainman Al Jourgensen‘s new project, SURGICAL METH MACHINE, released its self-titled debut album on April 15 via Nuclear Blast. The CD was recorded primarily at Jourgensen‘s home studio in Burbank, California with his longtime engineer Sam D’Ambruoso.

The official lyric video for the song “Rich People Problems” can be seen below.

Regarding the formation of SURGICAL METH MACHINE, Jourgensen told Metal Insider: “Pretty much it all started at the end of recording ‘From Beer To Eternity’ with MINISTRY. My engineer Sammy and my guitar player and best friend, the late great Mike Scaccia, who died during the making of that record — a lot of the stuff we really liked but we were also screwing around with faster rhythms and we joked you had to be on meth to do this kind of stuff. We put it on a shelf, and when the record came out, Mike died. And Sammy and I decided to work with brutal, faster music.”

He continued: “This record was done on and off over time, dicking around, with the premise of brutal fast music, and in the process we moved to California. And as soon as we did that, we went to a doctor and got our medical marijuana cards, ’cause that’s legal out here. You can tell almost exactly when we got our weed cards, ’cause the record went psychedelic — completely from meth to LSD. It’s pretty obvious.”

Asked by Allmusic how much of the record is him playing a character versus being himself, Jourgensen said: “It’s 100 percent me, because the character would be me, too. It’s just something I write into a character voice, but it’s also Sammy‘s take on that; he does a lot of vocals on this record, a lot of the rants and raves, like on ‘Rich People Problems’ and ‘Tragic Alert’. Those rants aren’t samples; that’s Sammy, and some of the character voices are mine, but I’ve been doing that for years all throughout MINISTRY and REVCO. We have a lot of character voices. It hits the point home without having to go and borrow someone’s sample, but it’s of the same mental makeup. We’d just rather do it ourselves.”

Jourgensen told Loudwire about the “bright melodic solo” in “Rich People Problems”: “I’m really proud of that solo, I like that solo. It’s kind of a throwback type of solo almost to like a [LYNYRD] SKYNYRD or Robin Trower days or something like that. I don’t know; it just popped out of me one day and we decided to keep it. I tried a couple of other different solos, but that one seemed to fit best.”

“Surgical Meth Machine” track listing:

01. I’m Sensitive
02. Tragic Alert
03. I Want More
04. Rich People Problems
05. I Don’t Wanna
06. Smash And Grab
07. Unlistenable
08. Gates Of Steel
09. Spudnik
10. Just Go Home
11. Just Keep Going
12. I’m Invisible