Post Modern Post Mortem

by Avi Pitchon

The first line on the title track of Laibach's new album "WAT" is "we are no ordinary type of group". Now, even Bad News tried to state that they are not just another metal band, but this often heard proclamation, coming from the collective/ist mouths of Laibach, is truly an understatement. To begin with, the band is only the musical section of NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst - an organization spanning also painting, design and theatre. The organization has declared itself to be a state, existing not in space but in time, issuing its own passports, which can fool any sleep-depraved immigration officer. The organization states that understanding the present and the future depends on a constant re-investigation, reconstruction and reevaluation of the past, with a specific focus on the 20th century utopian art movements and political regimes. Laibach's role in NSK is specifically the fields of politics and ideology. NSK believes that time is the vessel in which god, or the "immanent, consistent spirit", expresses themselves. Therefore, the album's title, We Are Time, spells Laibach's confusing and tantalizing play with icons, images and ideas from the entire history of the 20th century. The band's focus on powerful and masculine forms is expressed musically - it doesn't matter if you listen to their early industrial incarnation, to their demented cover versions to Queen, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Europe, DAF, and Opus among others, to the metal monster rifforama of their previous, 1996 release, "Jesus Christ Superstar", or to their current minimalist techno - there is a consistency revolving around militaristic rhythms, bombastic Wagnerian orchestrations and the trademark low and menacing lead vocals. Aesthetically, Laibach use a fusion of visuals, from Russian constructivist Malevich's cross to John Hartfield's axe swastika. NSK's design studio, New Kollectivism, caused furor when in 1987 they designed a poster for the Yugoslavian still socialist "day of youth". The poster won first prize and only then it was revealed that it was based on an image lifted from third Reich propaganda. "Laibach" is how the band's home and capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, was called under Nazi occupation, a fact banning the band from appearing under this name in Slovenia up until the late 80s. Wearing what looks like SS uniforms in their current press shots, putting the SS skull on the cover of the single "Tanz Mit Laibach", surrendering individuality to what is openly proclaimed to be a totalitarian collective is what lead to constant accusations of the band to be Fascists or Nazis. But, to paraphrase the words of Slovenian thinker Slavoj Zizek, it is the wrong question to ask because Laibach are not the answer, they are the question and WE are the ones to ask ourselves to what extent Fascism is part of US.

Personally I was always able to separate militaristic, Fascistic or even Nazi aesthetics from the murderous regimes themselves. My fascination with those aesthetics was never ever apologetic. Even as a lefty, crusty punk, I expressed my desire for peace and freedom through the mediums of anger and masculinity as opposed to any sort of hippie mellow bullshit. In that sense I found it easy to pledge allegiance to Laibach, interpreting their power play as a critique of the way a massacre is equally imminent if you consider ANY western political regime, and that the lessons of totalitarianism should be applied to democracy. It took years of pondering Laibach's riddle to discover that they are more than mere subversive iconoclasts, and that side by side with deconstruction they also offer construction, order, and law as a container of spirit. The elusive, stealth-like manner of proposing these, make Laibach an experience similar to the X-files: you really really want all the answers, to know what is the alien masterplan, to wonder if the people behind this TV show actually know what is hidden behind reality. To have a TV show, or a band, tell you what is the meaning of life and what is your role in the big picture. To paraphrase British researcher Alexei Monroe, a balance must be kept between brutal de-mystification and uncritical mystification of Laibach. Remaining on the personally mystified front, it often looks like Laibach has a masterplan, as if they knew when formed in 1980 that they are going to release WAT in 2003... a member who shall not be named answers as and for Laibach:

"Back in 1980 we actually did have a masterplan, but WAT was not really defined in it - at least not quite in details. We follow our instincts and our good luck. Our silence between 1996 and now just came by itself. In Laibach there is always silence or scandal."

Many Laibach fans are fixated on the band's more explicitly experimental 80s output. I'd criticize them for falsely identifying a well-trodden path from avant-garde to commercialism, perceived through a ghettho-metality cliche shot from the hips of any scenester who automatically prefers the past over the present, out of pure nostalgia - with Laibach's willingness and ability to mobilize ANY music, regardless of genre or distance in inches from the underground, for their absolutist vision. 1987's "Opus Dei" took the formative, starker martial industrial leanings and made tunes out of it. "Kapital" introduced dance beats into a sprawling, epic, layered, dense, detailed masterpiece. "NATO" bordered on EBM. "Jesus" was metal.
WAT is the band's simplest, most minimal techno album, stripped down to Laibach's basest potencies. I wonder if that, and any other shift, is conceptual, or has anything to do with personal or collective tastes. I also wonder if we would ever see the band brush some tips of metal ever again.

"WAT is very much a record about Laibach itself, so within the style we decided to go back to our most basic roots. We like simplicity. On the other hand we don't trust in taste; it is one of the biggest enemies of perception. Techno rhythm is one of our basic inspirations; it is the purest expression of the modern collective (techno) consciousness, militantly organized after the model of totalitarian industrial production. We move freely from one genre to another; every expression can be relevant and every approach can be experimental for us. We simply collect, collide and unite the opposites and that is what we are good for. We used guitars on "Jesus" because heavy metal guitar has a very biblical sound and energy, because heavy metal as a genre practices a very religious moral approach and because Jesus looked like a heavy metal musician. That album talked about the parallels between religion, heavy metal mythology and rock musicals from the 60s. We remixed some Morbid Angel songs in 1994. We will get closer to metal."

How did you choose the people who remixed the single? Why do you still hold on to the same vocal style?

"With Umek/Zeta Reticula and Temponauta we share the studio in Ljubljana. We decided to invite Johannes Heil because we like his surname. The voice stays the same because some things simply never change. A voice is a voice and it should stay natural. Besides, Laibach refuse to sing anyway."

Content-wise, the album offers yet more Teutonic and Tautological diatribes, self-reference, and a panoramic look on both the political left and right. The single sounds like a tribute to DAF's "Der Mussolini", only the names of the Italian Duche and the German Fuhrer are exchanged with the way they were called in Chaplin's "The Great Dictator". A song like "Now You Will Pay" describes swarms of barbarians stampeding from the east, and it's not describing a Terrorizer editorial meeting...

"The western countries were historically the most barbaric and conquering and they are now judging others through their own historical experience and their own barbarism. Of course they fear that sooner or later they will have to pay for their old (and new) crimes against humanity. And, quite rightfully so, they probably will. The song "Achtung!" is about the attraction of opposites, the appearance of the subject and its hidden truth, the difference between form and content, about the paradox of reality... it is a warning telling us to understand that there are always two sides of the coin. Progress is not yet victory and regression is not yet defeat. Democracy is not yet freedom and imprisonment is not slavery by definition. All ideologies are relative, therefore Laibach, which is absolute, cannot subscribe to any of it in total, but we can use all of them optionally. Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete; Laibach on the other hand makes concrete that which is abstract, and evil gets really nervous about this. Evil almost always comes out of ignorance, which believes to know everything and therefore claims for itself the right to judge; it is really easy for Laibach to make such evil showing up and losing its nerves. Sometimes we feel that we are good, even very good, but when we are bad, we are much better."

"As for the single, we wanted to quote original DAF lyrics, but they wouldn't give us their permission, so we had to search for alternative options at the very last moment because the song was already recorded and mixed. We had to run an additional vocal recording and we didn't want to change the song completely; in the end we decided to use Chaplin's Adenoid Hinkel and Benzino Napolini so we weren't quoting DAF and could still mention more or less the same historical characters."

Deep into this interview, I still have no answers for many questions, some of which bother me for years. Like, what is that entire Mars embassy thing? What is the black star? In what sense are Laibach religious? What is their relation to post-modernism? Why is WAT's closing track, "Anti-Semitism" the only one sung in Slovenian and what does it address? How can one become an NSK member? And what's with the headgear?

"So many questions... do you want to kill us with them? There were and still are many different uses of similar head-coverings in diverse times and cultures. We like elements that are similar in form but taken out of their historical contexts they can always be the subject of confronting interpretations. Mars was of course the ancient god of war and it is also the red planet, at the moment almost dangerously close to earth on its travel and some theories are claiming that it can have a devastating effect on the collective subconsciousness on the earth if it gets too close. We also have to keep Mars in mind for a possible option for escape from earth and continuing life there. The black star is the dying sun, and also the star of fate, waiting for everybody somewhere in the universe. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense and in this sense only we belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men. Modernism, post-modernism... it is all irrelevant to us; as classicist magicians we are already entering the zone of post-art - ars celare est artem. With Anti-Semitism we are addressing everybody, including all the racists and all the anti-racists. To become an NSK member one must be good in school"

First published in Terrorizer magazine