The Slovenian industrial outfit Laibach has returned after nearly seven years of being absent from the music world. In many ways, they were well respected, oft borrowed from stylistically, and had a great deal of influence on the development of the industrial scene in the mid 80’s and early 90’s, though they always managed to sidestep the limelight. Unlike their last album, Jesus Christ Superstars, which bathed itself in dated industrial style, a product and not a producer, this album often stakes out new places in the genre, even if much of what this album does is pastiche. The album looks out over the graveyard of our past with apocalyptic zeal. “Let them sleep who do not know the final day is here, the very last…and we leave at dawn” the lead singer monotonously narrates on the opening track. The album is littered with bits and pieces of our antiquated and banalized modernity—German patriarchal chants, Wagnerian choruses, organ music, grand tales of Good and Evil (mostly evil)—but it grounds itself in the ever-alive primal beat (“we are driven by the beat machine” they chant).
Several tracks will clearly make great techno mixes: “Tanz mit Laibach” (Dance with Laibach), “Achtung!” (Caution!), and “Das spiel ist aus” (The Game Is Over). “Hell: Symmetry” also stands out, erotically charged breaths released over off-kilter beats and eventually languishing church music. The lead singer repeats, “love me, love me not” while comparing the theory of Laibach’s music to selling your soul to the devil.
The pervasive mood of the album is impending doom, though the album often comes across as melodramatic. Who was it who said the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us he didn’t exist?
