Laibach

Biography

• Laibach are a band hailing from Trbovlje, Slovenia who formed in 1980. Known for their avant-garde mix of neo-classical, industrial and military music, the band are part of a larger art collective known as the Neue Slowenische Kunst and have released twelve albums since their debut in 1985.

  Laibach’s story is one as mired in controversy as any band with close ties to a revolutionary art collective would be, with their very first performance banned before it opened due to the local government’s objection with its posters. When a promotional tactic as innocent as a poster can get you shut down by the higher ups, that’s when you know you’re doing something right. Formed by Dejan Knez during his summer holidays from school in 1980, the band originally performed as a quintet, debuting live in 1982. Understandably, the band’s outrageous and provocative attitude made them one of the biggest Slovakian bands of all time in short order, and 1986 they’d found a famous fan in the form of the BBC’s resident indie rock guru John Peel, who broadcast songs of theirs on his radio show and made them cult heroes in the U.K.

  In 1989, their notoriety increased even further with the release of an E.P featuring seven different interpretations of The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil”. The band were loved and loathed as revolutionary iconoclasts and dangerous menaces in pretty equal measure, so obviously the one place to go after that was into the pop charts, which they did with the release of their 1992 album “Kapital”. This was a band so dedicated to their artistic cause that the L.P, CD and cassette tape versions of the album contained different versions of each song. Yet it was critically raved about and set them up for another successful album which came in the form of 1994’s “NATO”. The record comprised almost entirely of covers of different songs about war, from Pink Floyd’s “Dogs Of War” to Europe’s “The Final Countdown”.

  To this day the band remains as devoted, uncompromising and genuinely thrilling as they ever were, and are still the only band like them around. Theirs is a live show in which anything could happen, and if you want to see something that you’ll never forget, then Laibach come highly recommended.

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