Ministry have confirmed that their new bassist is Paul D'Amour, the multi-platinum recording artist and award-winning songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer.

As a founding member and co-architect of the Grammy-winning prog heavyweight band Tool, D’Amour’s distinctive songwriting and bass-playing style placed him at the forefront of the creation of a new genre in rock music. Paul’s expansive musical range, production skills, and his acute sensitivity translating emotion through music, perfectly aligned him toward film composing. D’Amour has scored numerous feature films, TV movies, branded content, and video games, and garnered frequent song placements.

Speaking with Revolver, Ministry leader Al Jourgensen expressed his excitement about D'Amour joining the band,  and shared the story of how they met in 1992 at Lollapalooza.

"I used to live with Timothy Leary, and he had given me these bottles of liquid LSD to bring on tour," Jourgensen said. "I'd put two drops in my bottle of whiskey that I'd bring onstage. I'd drink about half the bottle during a show. So we were on Lollapalooza in '92, I think it was San Francisco, and when we came offstage there were these two guys who were like, 'Great show, dude!' So I gave them my bottle of Bushmills, but I forgot that I had put LSD in it. So they drank it and they were tripping balls for, like, two or three days. They didn't know what was going on and they were freaking out. They were ready to call suicidal hotlines. It turned out to be Paul and Maynard from Tool! ... But he actually thanked me for that moment because he said it really got Tool going into being a psychedelic band. Pretty cosmic, right?"

(Top photo- Liz Walton)