Laibach - Laibach (1985)

Laibach's self-titled 1985 debut was regarded as an early industrial album, you can definitely hear where future alterna-electronic stars (Nine Inch Nails, Prodigy, etc.) learned their stuff. Since the band hailed from a small industrial town in Yugoslavia, it was only natural for their music to reflect their surroundings (look no further than the repetitive, pulsating factory-clang of the track "Battles"). But the band was also bent on incorporating politics into the mix, with songs like "Panorama," which cuts up a speech by a Yugoslavian president, and re-arranges it as a nonsensical narrative. The band also caused a stir visually by wearing traditional Alpine outfits and using the anti-Nazi art of Jon Heartfield (many people, especially outside Europe, mistakenly interpreted the band as a bunch of neo-Nazis). The music is consistently dark, creepy, and stark, which shows that Laibach were extremely cutting edge, and sadly far ahead of their time.

Laibach - Nova Akropola (1985)

Laibach - Krst Pod Triglavom - Baptism (1987)

Laibach - Nova Akropola (1985)

As Laibach took on more and more of a direct musical identity outside Slovenia, as opposed to being seen as simply part of the Neue Slowenische Kunst, the group's music gained a similar focus, though admittedly one still aimed specifically at an avant-garde level. Nova Akropola readily captures the band's stone-faced fascination with propaganda, fascism, and the implications of rallying and control, while the music was so perfectly on the money with stentorian rhythms, rough chants, and unnerving textures and samples that it almost beggars description. The title track is a perfect example, string-synths and horns slowly, creepily wafting up through the mix before a distorted, strangled voice starts howling over the slowest death-march beat around. There are signs at many points that the group is starting to explore the perversely accessible styles of later years, but it's still early days yet -- the appropriate comparison wouldn't be industrial/dance so much as the first albums by the Swans. "Die Liebe," though, is very much the stomping, riff-heavy semi-dance hit from hell, something of a dry run for the later demolitions of Queen and other groups. "Vade Retro" takes a calmer but not less haunting approach, a mix of keyboards and drums providing rhythms while vocals swirl like disembodied choirs from the mountaintop. The clipped, commanding vocals throughout may only be understandable to those who know Slovenian, but a handily provided translation increases the extreme irony even further -- sample lyric, from "War Poem": "The stronger one will wash our faces and moisten our lips with a rag/and the night with a cold knife will cut us black bread." A couple of older cuts make return appearances on the American issue, including the marvelous "Drzava," Tito sample fully intact.

Laibach - Laibach (1985)

Laibach - Krst Pod Triglavom - Baptism (1987)

Laibach - Krst Pod Triglavom - Baptism (1987)

Laibach's reason for existence has always been an exploration of extremities, but in many ways the group rarely got more extreme than on the soundtrack for the massive Neue Slowenische Kunst stage production Baptism, or Krst Pod Triglavom -- Baptism Below Triglav in full. Triglav itself is Slovenia's highest mountain, while the baptism in question refers to a historical battle between Slovenian pagans and invading Germans who won the day and forcibly converted the losers to Christianity. The parallels between that and more recent examples of military and cultural invasion are not merely obvious but fully intended. Numerous photos of the production are included in the album packaging, showing a compelling design making equal reference to medieval imagery, fascist stylings and Weimar-era experimentalism -- arguably the music and art had rarely been so appropriately matched. That music itself was the most ambitious the group had yet recorded, something which could appeal to the classical music aficionado as much as the industrial/experimental wing, while the humor is of an extremely rarified nature -- a collection of Beatles and Rolling Stones covers this isn't. Wagnerian opera is unsurprisingly a chief reference point, though the group focuses on a mantra-like repetition of musical and lyrical phrases, doubtless the better to draw the parallels to unthinking fascist reactions. Not everything is strings and horns, admittedly -- sometimes it can be as simple as a looped beat and chant with the occasional vocal bark of "Raus!" What sounds like crowd samples and possibly political speeches get mixed with metallic sound snippets and even acoustic guitar, while more than once the band just bodily dropped in extended performances from other operas entirely! With sly, bitter hilarity, Baptism is packaged in an obvious knockoff of the Deutsch Grammophon in-house style for its run of classical music releases -- another example of German cultural colonization, one could argue.

Laibach - Nova Akropola (1985)
Laibach - Laibach (1985)