Al Jourgensen not only has reactivated Ministry for a new album and tour next summer, but he’s decided to chronicle the recording of the ‘Relapse’ record with a series of short ‘webisodes,’ the first of which can be watched here. The album is due out in spring, with a limited number of U.S. dates next summer.

Al Jourgensen today announced the brief U.S. leg of the reactivated Ministry’s upcoming Relapse Tour 2012, five concerts in just four cities — Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago — with no plans to add additional American destinations to the trek.

Al Jourgensen has reunited Ministry three years after vowing he was finished with the industrial-metal juggernaut, and says he’ll record and release a new album dubbed ‘Relapse’ before the end of the year and play a limited run of U.S. and European concerts in 2012.

This has been online for a couple years now, but it didn’t come to our attention until this week: It’s a clip of future Oscar winner Trent Reznor in one of his mid-’80s, pre-Nine Inch Nails bands performing a fairly faithful cover of the Billy Idol hit ‘Eyes Without a Face.’

This week’s new releases include a box set of Joy Division 7-inch singles; a limited-edition, marble-vinyl 2LP set of The Cure’s expanded ‘Entreat Plus’; Dead Can Dance’s 4LP vinyl ‘Box Set I’; and the U.S. release of Freebass’ debut CD ‘It’s a Beautiful Life.’

The defunct Ministry next month will release ‘Every Day is Halloween: The Anthology,’ a 12-track compilation that appears to mix some of the band’s best-known singles with new covers of classic songs by AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones — and Amy Winehouse?

This week’s new releases include ‘Platinum: Greatest Hits,’ the physical edition of a new INXS best-of released online earlier this year; ‘MiXXXes of the Molé,’ a full-album remix of Ministry’s ‘Houses of the Molé’; and ‘BXI,’ an EP by Boris and The Cult’s Ian Astbury.

Breaking up two years ago hasn’t slowed Ministry’s output: Al Jourgensen’s defunct industrial-metal juggernaut next month will release ‘MiXXXes of the Molé,’ a track-by-track ‘trance metal’ remix of the band’s 2004 album ‘Houses of the Molé.’

This week’s new releases include brand-new studio albums from Laurie Anderson (‘Homeland’) and Front Line Assembly (‘Improvised Electronic Device’), plus expanded reissues from Spandau Ballet (‘True,’ ‘Parade’) and A Flock of Seagulls (‘Listen’).

For $200,000, New Order re-recorded ‘Blue Monday’ — allegedly the best-selling 12-inch of all time — for a Sunkist TV commercial (which also uses footage from the band’s Kathryn Bigelow-directed video for ‘Touched By the Hand of God’).

Could it be? Is that Ministry’s Al Jourgensen singing ‘don’t give me that so-so soda/that same old cola’ in this 1983 commercial for Shasta? And here’s a purported 1982 7UP jingle sung by Gary Numan, too.

This week’s new releases include Record Store Day-related reissues from R.E.M., Sonic Youth and Devo, plus the expanded edition of Iggy and the Stooges’ classic ‘Raw Power,’ and a new Revolting Cocks album.

Round-up of headlines from last week while we were on vacation, including news about Paul Westerberg, Echo & The Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, Front Line Assembly, Nine Inch Nails, Talking Heads’ Christ Frantz, Duran Duran and more.