"Please rise for the deconstruction of our national anthem."

Yesterday's post by Alex on the new Laibach record got me thinking about the specfics of why Laibach's program of political satire works so well. To start with a quick nit-pick: I wouldn't say that Laibach's aesthetic is rooted in fascist imagery and music so much as it is rooted in totalitarian tropes. There's a black political humour that only comes from having one's tiny eastern European nation repeatedly steamrolled by harsh regimes from east and west, from right and left.

Anyhow, to my mind, it's pithy responses like "we are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter" that confirm Laibach as brilliant satirists. Truly committed conceptual artists (like, say, Andy Kaufman) never give the gambit away, because satire, unlike many "lower" forms of humour, requires some knowledgeable familiarity and conscious engagement with the material being satirized (as well as the formal elements of that satirization) on the part of the audience. On a side note, this is why I'd never be gutsy enough to say that any material of Laibach's wasn't conceptual. A song that they played at their last Vancouver concert sounded like a typically oontzy track in the "WAT" style until a friend from the former Yugoslavia approached me, laughing and explaining that the lyrics were from a folk song sung more than a century ago by Serbs as they were crossing a particular river, preparing to kill Croats. Or possibly vice versa. One way or the other, I didn't get the reference, nor why it would incite laughter per se. In short, my friend had the cultural language required to enter into the satire, unlike myself.

Confusion is Laibach's bread and butter: they bank on it. It's because they only muddy waters further when asked to clarify (at least for that AMG goober) that they are of such a higher calibre than all of those neo-folk ponces who run around wearing the runes and emblems of other cultures without any regard for their connotation and then explode into "defenceless artist" histrionics when anyone questions them. Blah, I don't want to get into all this again.

A point more salient to "Volk" - I think it's fair to say that their project on this record is a complete inversion of one of their most tried and true schticks: their remakes of pop songs which transform often trite original material into frighteningly epic anthems. There are a couple of interesting theories as to the nature of their intent in turning a goofy, touchy-feely song like "I've Got A Feeling" into Nuremburg rally call-and-response, or a song as lazy and crappy as "Live is Life" into a towering monument of glory (but to what?): they could be simply pointing out that aesthetics are substance, that form trumps whatever simple and base content these songs started with, or, and this is what I think makes those covers so compelling, they could be only drawing out and making explicit themes and possible readings of seemingly innocuous pop music that we'd never otherwise see - the supremacy of will, emotion and self within the tiny, insulated perfect world of the love song. We all take it as an indication of his insanity that Charles Manson heard personal apocalyptic messages in the white album (and rightfully so), but it's impossible to approach any of the songs on "Let It Be" from the same position of naivitee once you've heard what they "mean" within the context of Laibach's reinterpretation (with the possible exception of "Across The Universe"). To paraphrase Nietzsche, if you gaze for long into a spinning 45, the 45 gazes also into you.

What does all of this have to do with "Volk"? Well, the genre they're taking as their subject, national anthems, couldn't on the surface be any more different than the pop songs they've repurposed in the past (although, as I've tried to point out, surfaces are quite deceiving when it comes to Laibach). Instead of "sabotaging" the pop song by introducing questions of nationalism, power and politics that are normally anathema to pop, in "Volk" Laibach are creating space for commentary and criticism within a form that is explicitly meant for opposite purposes: namely the unquestionable celebration of nationalism and power. If the isolated would-be dictator can find inspiration in Top 40 dross, then so can the cultural critic, the anarchist and the dissident find fertile ground in the chest-pounding, anti-thought of the jingoistic anthem.

Laibach 'Volk'

Laibach is by nature an incredibly political musical entity. When the foundations of your art are the confluence of totalitarian imagery and pop music, it's impossible to not have pretty much everything you do picked apart and analyzed, searching for a straightforward interpretation which may not even be there, a straightforward meaning which arguably can't exist at all. The strength of Laibach as a group has always been in their acceptance of the lack of easy answers in their own work, and in politically charged art and music in general. The eternal question that has always haunted them, the "are they or aren't they fascists themselves" question misses the point by a wide margin. It's the ambiguity that matters, a fact that the band awknowledges in their refusal to address it except with more questions (ie, vocalist Milan's oft repeated declaration "We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter", a statement only an idiot would try to draw a literal answer from). Which brings us to 2006's "Volk" another in the band's series of concept records*, this LP finds our venerable satirists collaborating with Slovenian group Silence on a series of songs based on national anthems. The lyrics for each track address some social or historical aspect of the nation, while the arrangements twist the typical bombast and *ahem* anthemic qualities to be found in national music into something much more sinister. It's a natural fit, after all there isn't a piece of music simultaneously populist and political than a national anthem and that fact provides fertile ground for commentary on issues of national identity. On "Volk" the commentary often takes a more laid-back approach, "Anglia" is a light trip-hop style piece which skewers the arrogance of the English empire even in decline, while "Vaticanae" is almost reverent in it's simple Organ and vocal fuelled approach. There is confrontational work here however, not surprisingly on "Yisra’el" which includes within it verses from Palestinian national songs and "Francia" which criticizes France's hard-headed policies in dealing with civil unrest. It's fascinating to listen to both from the musical angle where the pomp of the music is frequently sent over the top as with "Nippon", or alternately stripped of extraneous meaning and turned into simple pleas and statements, as with "Slovania". Simultaneously, this may be the most obvious and most inscrutable piece of work from the latter era of the band's catalogue, driving home the point that Laibach is never about answers, but about posing questions, which in turn are answers in and of themselves.

*Can Laibach not make a concept record? Discuss.

Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World

I wanted to continue with the issue of fascist imagery and satire in pop as alluded to by Alex previously.

There's an art to deploying totalitarian imagery in pop media, and Laibach are the undisputed masters thereof as far as I'm concerned. I have no qualms with such subjects and imagery being explored, but if you've got the cajones to do so, you'd best also have the cajones to withstand accusations and misunderstandings. Getting your panties in a twist as though you didn't expect any backlash or offering mealy-mouthed defenses about how people need to lighten up and not take things so seriously doesn't cut it - I'm looking at you, Hanzel Und Gretyl.

Questions to consider before applying fascist tropes to your band's image or music: What do you hope to accomplish by doing so? Are you attempting to draw parallels between fascism and other current political regimes/discourses? Or between fascism and other structures (love, sex, pop music itself)? I'm not saying that explanations and justifications must be clearly stated and passed through a Nazi-detection machine before being released, just that you'd best be giving your audience something to think about rather than trying to score cheap hype via poorly planned shock. Doing the latter earns you the loss of every opportunity extending from your decision.

Some related mp3s:
-Ramones, "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World" A somewhat obvious choice, and not the most well-developed, but the title perfectly demonstrates Hegel's idea of man's need to make history, first within the domestic sphere in youth, then in state-regulated (and generally imperialist) expansion.
-Foetus, "I'll Meet You In Poland, Baby" Again we've got parallels between between sexual and world conquest, executed with all of the panache and lyrical double-entendres that are JG Thirlwell's trademark.

Some further discussion on the subject:
-A scathing indictment of Death In June written by avant art historian and literary enfant terrible Stuart Home.
-Mick Mercer goes off on Nazi fetishism with righteous indignation, although old Uncle Mick might be throwing the kinder out with the baderwasser as far as condemning the entirety of neo-folk. From a semiotic standpoint, though, Mick's 100% right: it's never "just clothes."

Thoughts meander

As a bit of a unicorn chaser to the sturm und drang of the previous post, I thought I'd offer up Laibach's cover of "Across The Universe" from their "Let It Be" record in which they reinvent every track of the Beatles original (save the title track). The simple beauty of this version offers some short respite from the terror of "I've Got A Feeling" reimagined at Nuremburg et al, and may be, dare I say it, the only move ever made by Laibach not laden with satire and political subtext.

Slovenia is a Land of Contrast

I remember Bruce and I once had a conversation about how little satire was left in Industrial music. Aside from Snog, and the occasional Foetus release from Thirlwell, it seems like the genre is pretty devoid of any clever social commentary. That is to say that if random EBM group A writes a song about a social issue or what have you, I'm not expecting them to have much to say about it other than "Sweat Shops are bad!" or whatever. Anyways, during the convo, Bruce pointed out quite rightly that the all time kings of Industrial satire Laibach are still going strong after a quarter of a century at work. You'd think that a band who made their name doing militaristic covers of pop songs might have run out of creative steam some time back, but those wacky slovenians are still hard at work using our silly songs to make points about european politics and the contradictions inherent in western democracy (for real!). Seeing as their use of imagery is so central to what they do, I figured a quick video rundown would be fun.

Life is Life (from the album Opus Dei)


This is what I'm talking about. Cover of a lame reggae song, made over into an ultra-fascist anthem. So ultra-fascist in fact that one questions how anyone could have ever doubted it was parody. I could say something about how this makes a salient point about lyrical context, but you already knew that right?

Sympathy for the Devil (from Sympathy for the Devil)

I don't really have much to say about this, except that I saw this on TV when I was a kid and it scared the hell out of me. This was back when Much Music showed videos, and not reality TV shows. Although I must admit combining the two for a Laibach reality TV show would be pretty slick. Anyways, I gotta admire a band that makes a video where they march right into hell like it ain't even a thing.

Anglia (from Volk)

From last year's Volk, an album where each song had a theme for a particular nation, including elements from those nation's national anthems. This is a little more direct then you might otherwise expect from them, but it's still pretty neat. See if you can figure out which country this is about!