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Rammstein for "grown-ups" - Kerrang! 25-Oct-03

Laibach: Rammstein for “grown-ups”
Words: Catherine Yates
Kerrang! Issue 978 - October 2003
If, as Marilyn Manson maintains, art is meant to deliver a question mark, not an answer, then you imagine it's something that has struck particular resonance with Laibach. Since their inception in 1980, the Slovenian industrialists have determinedly kept people guessing by keeping their image, politics, and lives in a shroud of deliberate ambiguity designed to frustrate as much as create enjoyment.
This after all is a band who were once banned by their own country (after a television appearance in military fatigues in 1983, the government forbade further public appearances or even the use of the name 'Laibach' in Slovenia); whose gigs have been characterised by blinding white lights turned on the audience, sound levels at near-sadistic volumes and the general ambience of a political rally; whose albums have shown a penchant for the bizarre and the mischievous (how else can you justify setting Macbeth to music, or covering Europe's airbrushed synth-metal anthem 'The Final Countdown'?); who declared themselves a virtual state in 1992 (Neue Slowenische Kunst'- NSK) that came complete with passports; and who once famously declared to a media convinced of dodgy right-wing activism that they were 'as much fascists as Hitler was a painter" (clue: he wasn't much cop). All of which is bound to have you asking questions, even if it's simply 'what the f**k is going on here then?'.
Not that you're going to get any answers. Laibach might have returned to the fray with new album 'Wat' after a seven-year absence, but at a time where markets are at their most fickle and political feelings are high, you'd imagine this might have convinced them that maybe they should tone things down a little, then the full-on stomp-fest of current video 'Tanz Mit Laibach' with the band suited and jackbooted in military garb against a collage of death and destruction, should tell you that age has not mellowed them.
Neither has their stance on promotion - interviews are by e-mail only and answered as a collective - always anonymous, and usually laced with enough cryptic wordplay to put politicians to shame. Ask them where they've been for the past seven years and a simple "We laid back and enjoyed. Thinking of Slovenia” is all you'll get.
Put it to them that newer audiences will hear the grating vocal monotone, steroidal rhythms and industrial wrath of 'Wat' and declare them Rammstein without the pyro and they'll agree.
“Laibach is the foundation and Rammstein are the pyrotechnical variation. Rammstein are Laibach for adolescents, Laibach are Rammstein for grown ups."
Push them on political issues and you suspect the flowery terms (try 'Collectivism is in fact the very principle of the modern technicistic capitalism") are simply their bone-dry wit telling you to figure it out yourself. Ask them to tell you a joke and they're more than happy to oblige ("Britain is great” is their choice rib-tickler). Ask them what they've learned after 23 years of Laibach and they'll say pointedly and poignantly, that “the future is becoming the most expensive luxury in the world".
Still, you can hope that while Armageddon remains at bay, Laibach are going to have some hand in shaping the future - as a lesson in discipline and sticking to your principles, there are plenty of bands in rock's current emaciated ranks who could do well to take note, while the MTV- weaned generations could do well to note that it's better to think for, rather than about, yourself.
“Hope there is,” they say. "And hope is a risk that must be run."
Let them run with it.
LAIBACH's new album 'Wat' is out now on Mute

Comment by the webmaster:
Kerrang! are a little late with the review as the CD was released on 8th September 2003, and it was on my CD player 2 days later. My favourite tracks are ‘Tanz mit Laibach’ and ‘Achtung!’ though the whole CD is excellent and if you like Rammstein you will like this. The video for ‘Tanz mit Laibach’ is included on the CD

© 2005 Sue Lindemann