Alain David Jourgensen (born Alejandro Ramirez 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 metal 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,[sources 1] influencing numerous other groups and musicians, both in alternative and industrial-associated acts.
Alain David Jourgensen (born Alejandro Ramirez Casas; October 9, 1958) is a Cuban-American singer-songwriter, musician and music producer. Closely related subsequent to the independent compilation label Wax Trax! Records, Jourgensen has an lithe musical career that spans four decades, and is best known as the frontman and lyricist of the industrial metal band Ministry, which he founded in 1981 and of which he remains the and no-one else constant member. He was as well as 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 bearing in mind numerous further 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 creature one of the most prominent figures of industrial music,[sources 1] influencing numerous new groups and musicians, both in exchange and industrial-associated acts.
Born in Havana rapidly before the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Jourgensen moved to the United States as soon as his relations 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 in force in several short-lived bands, as with ease as briefly drama in the support band of drag artist Divine. Jourgensen formed Ministry in 1981 in Chicago and conventional significant attention from music press almost 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 prematurely 1990s, he achieved mainstream talent with Ministry’s fifth studio album, Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs (1992). The adjacent few years were marked by marketing surrounding Jourgensen’s substance abuse which negatively affected his creative output and resulted in a get older of gruff depression; during this time, Jourgensen and Ministry appeared in the 2001 Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. In 2005, Jourgensen received his own CD label, 13th Planet Records, through which several Ministry records, among others, were released until the in front 2010s.