Laibach: cybersonic alarm for Europe

Lesser quality, to be polite, music has increased since 9/11 and everything has decidedly turned toward greater escapism: hardly a muso has dared make comments, raise a voice, criticise in songs. Music has become more common, trivial, less world-aware and more self-centred… Even contemporary ‘punks’ are too concerned with the inner-workings that hardly stray from the self-sorrow of nu-metal ‘issues’…

There are no more protesters, there are no more rebels fighting to erect barricades and storm the forts of wrongdoing, ignorance, apathy and oblivion chasing… ‘Age of Celebrity’ and cultivated blandness is the world we populate. George Orwell’s ‘warnings’ in ‘1984’ are still becoming reality, as our freedoms are eroded on daily basis and not only political but mental and touristy… This is the world to which Laibach return to after seven years of absence.

On top of it, history in the making is a strange thing to observe as this band formed in Yugoslavia (defunct), the current album is issued under the Slovenian flag and very soon, it will be under the EU’s ’12 Stars’. Laibach have hardly moved while the political map around them keeps changing… for the worse and it is not a surprise to find these fine noise-terrorists in a serene mood: dark, menacing and geared with terminal beats…

Machines are taking over, it is not yet ‘Terminator’ time but nerds without being one with Pentium processors, withdrawal symptoms occur en masse. ‘Wat’ sounds like an aural screenplay about the dystopia becoming reality. (Will pessimists and nihilist start partying now?!) ‘B Mashina’ launches us into a strange universe with spoken word that uses a heavy Slovak accent to add drama to the pronouncements; recent single ‘Tanz Mit Laibach’ is delivered in German, as few other tracks to give it a more European Unity ‘evil’ feel.

Machine driven music is honouring Krautrock but enriched with elements of local culture that often sounds like it is coming from the last church on Earth; there is something secular about Laibach’s music and this time the new cathedral is not a shopping mall, unless you count Hell’s Anteroom full of designers into it. Well, another track is handily entitled ‘Hell: Symmetry’, then ‘Satanic Versus’ and ‘Ende’. A touch of controversy is brought on ‘Anti-Semitism’.

Achtung! Lubljana calling! (Laibach is Germanic version of their hometown’s name.) The end is nigh, we have no idea how soon, but here are possible interpretations to haunt you until the day. Start dancing around the ruins of civilisation!

8/10
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Laibach play their only UK date on 12 October 2003 at London’s Scala