With their heavy industrial past, unsmiling demeanours, ironic militaristic appearance and penchant for bizarre cover versions, your reviewer's always found Slovenia's premier musical ambassadors LAIBACH to be a great concept, but considerably harder to take on record.
Crucially, though, this canny quartet have always been very visually literate, so for someone like myself, this collection of 13 promo films on one DVD is probably the one essential Laibach item you'd need and a very handy 'Greatest Hits' compendium rolled into one.
And, it must be said, it's mostly fascinating stuff that's contained within. Spanning almost twenty years, you're initially amazed to discover just how long these guys have been a thorn in the side of popular culture and how well they've weathered the storms of fashion. It's also important to note that for their permanently dour countenenances, there's clearly a deep-seated streak of humour running through the band's collective veins and this does also permeate the visual aspects of the band's work as well as the heavy-duty propaganda.
The collection kicks of with UK breakthrough single "Drzava (The State)" (1986) and some brilliantly grainy B&W footage of the band that looks as though it could have been made for propaganda purproses during the reign of infamous Yugoslavian leader Marshal Tito. Having said that, what the culturally-inclined dictator would have made of Fall collaborator Michael Clark's curiously sinuous, shaven-headed dance routine is debatable.
1987's hilariously deadpan version of Opus's dreadful stadium-bound anthem "Opus Dei (Life Is Life)" ushers in the first of the band's string of 'alternative' hits with unlikely covers. The film for this is terrific, with the band starring in a mordantly amusing Hitler Youth-style alpine travelogue (though it's probably Slovenia) featuring such holiday-related staples as running deer, waterfalls running uphill, flooder log cabins and, er, woodland cemeteries. Wish you were here, folks?
Other highlights of the band's earlier period include their austere German language take of Queen's "One Vision" (here as "Gebut Einer Nation"), the strangely dreamlike, harpsichord-stuffed cover of The Beatles' "Across The Universe" and the inimitible reworking of The Rolling Stones' demonic "Sympathy For The Devil." This latter is especially memorable: all spooky Slovenian castles, Bacchanalian feasting and caves with the biggest stalagmites (oo-er!) you've ever seen. Indeed, even Mick'n'Keef would surely approve of the angelic maidens that make an appearance towards the end.
Fast forward to the post-Berlin Wall days of the 90s and Laibach's musical territory had become more sinuous electronic Eurogrooves, as heard on "Wirtschaft Ist Tod" with its' curious female aliens and human conveyor belt imagery. They continued to plunder the worst of the age's stadium pillockry by reinventing both Europe's truly frightful "Final Countdown" and Status Quo's "In The Army Now" and produced a pair of sister videos for these, featuring superb computer-generated animation and the band literally going into space on their Blofeld-style space probe. Entertaining gear.
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The only real live performance is for the DAF cover "Alle Gegen Alle" which surprised this reviewer by being one of the DVD's highlights. I've never seen Laibach live and always assumed their concerts would be joyless, static affairs, but while this is dark and dramatic, it's also powerful and mesmeric and not at all what I'd expected. We then come bang up to date with "Tanz Mit Laibach" and "Das Spiel Ist Aus" from recent album "Wat". The first features the best use of the word "Kaput" in a lyric ever and the latter offers up a chorus of "Raus! Der spiel ist aus!" which would probably sound top at closing time after 13 pints of snakebite and - in terms of letting off steam -would no doubt be preferable to twatting a policeman on the way home. So there.
A further useful bonus is the short documentary about the band's new album "Wat", which also acts as a neat potted history of the group. It explains the post-War Yugolslavian situation in layman's terms and also takes you on a ride through Laibach's early years (1980 - their UK recording debut in 1986) where we hear of a group as reviled in their homeland as The Sex Pistols were here. At one time even their usage of the name Laibach was banned, while they were forbidden to play concerts in Slovenia between 1983 and early 1987. Even in more recent times they've been capable of getting up peoples' noses: in 1997 they performed a major show in the Slovenian capital for numerous national dignitaries and insisted on playing a set of early material that pissed off the Archbishop of Lubljana so much he left the building never to return. Anarchy or wot, eh?
This DVD, then, is a suprisingly diverting collection and an intriguing journey into the heart and mind of this collectively subversive quartet that sprinkles a little humour and insight upon the Slavic enigma we call Laibach. Respect is due.
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