Location: Delavski dom / Trbovlje / Slovenia
Concert date: 23.03.2007
Attendance: 500
The Laibach show, postponed from last October (2006) to the end of March this year (2007), finally happened, right in the middle of town, in the band’s original sin territory – the Delavski dom in Trbovlje! For the band, this was just the first leg of a tour that took them through Eastern Europe and the Balkans in February 2007, presenting their current studio album “Volk” (2006).
Before the hall doors even opened, we were already chirping away happily and killing time with bites of a curious dish made especially for the occasion: a “Laibach” cookie version with a carefully carved Laibach emblem (the cross) and a cogwheel-shaped edge. The tables were also loaded with little glasses of young wine, which didn’t go down people’s throats as smoothly as you’d expect, given the usual Slovenian devotion to the sweet drops of all sorts of alcoholic brews.
By 8 PM we’re already sitting in the first and second row of the hall. The second row, in fact, right next to the eminent representatives of Mute Records, who came to cheer on their gladiators. There was no support act, but the overture was handled by partisan assault marches, so along the way we refreshed some recent history and our memory: that Comrade Stane led us from victory to victory, that the Bohor still murmurs, that the Brigades still rush onward unstoppably, and that the song of freedom still roars to life, for real!
With the intro of Prešeren’s Zdravljica, the mood suddenly turned serious and the hall rose smartly to its feet. 8:30 PM! Let the concert begin! Laibach are very proud of their new studio album and achievement “Volk”. This time they gave it a full hour of their set, presenting it in its entirety, from head to toe.
The lineup was actually a combination of three bands: Laibach, with the central figure Milan Fras, without whom Laibach are unimaginable, plus members of Silence (Primož Hladnik, Boris Benko) and Melodrom (Mina Špiler, female vocals). Guitar and bass weren’t needed this time, so the drums were the only live instrument on stage. Besides the classic “back play” samples, most of the new melodies and the atmosphere were built from electronic sampling and keyboard work.
I hadn’t listened to the “Volk” record even once beforehand. I didn’t even want to hear it. I wanted to face it head-on, with the band playing 10 meters away from my senses. What Laibach delivered in the first hour of their show confirmed that the “laibachs” are still capable of creating something fresh, creative and, most importantly of all, utterly unique. Authenticity guaranteed! Evolution continues. Laibach and their state NSK remain timeless. And that’s what my feelings confirmed on first audio-visual contact with the newly created material and the new face of Laibach.
An elegance of musical sophistication infused with a stunningly recognizable atmosphere that only Laibach know how to build. So, a completely fresh album, a new step in their evolution, and along with it that unmistakable mood, saturated with the burden of the past, the victories and defeats of our fathers, the creation and rooting of national consciousness, which sparks up in the senselessness of wars, in genocide, in hatred, in intolerance, in short in the absurdities of all absurdities, for the good of the fatherland, for the very same good of maintaining a status quo vision lived by the generations before us and which we want the generations after us to live too. In short, the classic rebellious heritage of rock music, but in Laibach’s hands delivered in a supremely fine, yet particularly chilling and shockingly real way. There’s a whiff of apocalypse in the air throughout, of post-apocalypse, of lands riddled with ruins, doom, sorrow,… The peoples keep training and building themselves up for military clashes. For conquering new living space. All for glory and honor. Typical “Laibach-style” charm.
The album “Volk” integrates the basic melodic motif on which national anthems are based. Laibach built on these motifs, expanded their musical reach, and recoded them into their own language. Of course, in this particular case it’s the fruit of exceptional harmony in the collaboration with Silence, something Laibach can’t hide in their new guise. The names of the aforementioned reworked basic song motifs have been changed too, aimed at setting new borders between nations, or abolishing them. So we Slavs (Slovania) are united into one nation, the Germans (Germania) into another. An excellent and thoroughly sensible move, through which sparks the idea of NSK itself, a state in time and without borders, to whose doctrine Laibach remain loyal.
The atmosphere created sucked me in instantly into a unique ambience, into the Laibach world! Fras with his one-of-a-kind interpretation, in the polished and recognizable NSK getup, authoritative and stern, like a true shepherd of souls leading us sheep in the hall, hypnotically, routinely, and without the slightest bit of effort into this “Laibach world”. Laibach built a special mood with the visuals and screenplay in the background! The national symbols of the nations were replaced with the letter “V”, which can have many meanings. “Volk”, “Victory” or “Victory & Volk”, etc… The expansion of nations through the conquest (victories) of territory,…
Laibach showed they were born to interpret their vision in a hall. The dynamics of the atmosphere surged at an exceptional level throughout, but the peak was surely when Boris Benko appeared on stage and the band performed the song Nippon. An excellent, masterful play of strict focus and the merging of the NSK vision through a musical form delivered in a unit called Laibach. One sweet shock after another.
People were glued to their seats, following the first part of the show in a hypnotic trance and greeting every song with thunderous applause. The first part of the concert was closed by the taped NSK anthem, while the performers went backstage to rest and get some fresh air.
The second part of the concert lasted barely over half an hour. Maybe it would be more fitting to simply call it an encore. It drew on songs from the band’s younger creative period, steeped in techno industrial. Two girls with virtuous lines then rushed onto the stage, the personification of order and discipline, a trademark of the modern-day Laibach shows, and began abusing their snare drums in the usual manner. The encore was symbolically capped off by a handshake between Milan Fras and a representative of the Mute Records label, and then Laibach said their goodbyes.
We in the crowd wrongly expected another encore. What followed was just a 10-minute taped remix forged from motifs of some recognizable Laibach songs, which served as a short retrospective of the band’s rich career.
The hall was on its feet, saluting the band on stage. The Laibach concert was actually something completely different from the “out-door” experience in Kamnik in August 2006. The atmosphere was much more intense and expressive. All the band’s little finesses came across far better, the delicacy in the sound that the look and stage performance of the new record “Volk” literally demands. Mina Špiler’s excellent, icy yet majestic interpretation brought extraordinary moods into the Laibach picture alongside Fras’s vocals, waves of contrast. A thing Laibach already flirted with in the eighties with Anja Rupel, which in the band’s new guise obviously reaches its “crescendo”.
A Laibach concert, an event that takes your breath away. An event that always touches you, touches you deep, even if you don’t want it to. For an hour and a half you simply become an enchanted part of this unique world of music. The grandeur of musical hypnosis that only great artists are capable of.
Setlist
1. Zdravljica (taped intro)
2. Germania
3. America
4. Anglia
5. Rossiya
6. Francia
7. Italia
8. Espana
9. Yisra’el
10. Turkiye
11. Zhonghua
12. Nippon
13. Slovania
14. NSK
—encore—
15. Tanz mit Laibach
16. Alle gegen Alle
17. Du bist unser
18. Hell : Symmetry
19. Achtung!
20. Das Spiel ist Aus
21. Laibach medley (taped outro)
