And everyone lost everything, and perished with the rest

Laibach – Opus Dei

Back when I first graduated from uni and got a real job, one of the first things I spent my new found wealth on was a whole bunch of random CDs ordered from overseas, all by bands that I'd been curious about but never actually listened to before. Most of them turned out to be a big disappointment. Some where just not that great, while others proved to me that you can take the concept of confrontational difficult-listening music to a point where it's really just a load of stupid bullshit (and if you don't believe me, go and look up the genre of Power Electronics).

So I pretty much just ditched the whole lot of them at the bottom of my drawer and forgot about them. But recently I started thinking that maybe one or two of them were worth giving a second chance. So I picked out 'Opus Dei', which I had a relatively good impression of the first time around, and listened to it a few times.

Laibach are a Slovenian industrial band (Laibach is the German name for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia), who are very overtly political, although only in a subversive way. They dress like Nazis, they stage their live shows like political rallies, and their music is often bombastic and Wagnerian. But of course their actual message is probably not too far afield from the likes of Rage Against the Machine. According to the Wikipedia page, they're considered to be influences of Rammstein. I don't see it myself, the vocalists sound very similar, and they both have very martial sounding drums, but beyond that they have little in common.

This particular album begins with a few sarcastic covers, 'Leiber Heist Leiber' by Opus (the original of which I'm not familiar with) and 'Geburt Einer Nation', which transforms Queen's 'One Vision' into a fascist anthem, complete with strings and organ. Later on we get into more traditional industrial styles, long, repetitive electronic tracks, heavy on the samples and stomping rhythms. They still keep the theme of the first few songs, with most of the samples being related to war or angry Germans.

I'm very glad I rediscovered this album. I'm not sure why it left such a poor impression when I first got it. The covers are fun and over-the-top, but the best tracks are the later ones, which are very good examples of 80s industrial.