Bristol
25 February 2025
Boy did Laibach bring the drama, the first third of the show cherry-picking their back catalogue, starting with a mangled noise-fest with lots of slanted perspectives and controlled chaos. A scampering scrapyard of debris and screeching guitar, the drummer coming out from behind his kit to supply an eerie air-raid drone from a spinning air-pipe as the keyboardist’s chords conjured a host of bent up, shattered shapes.
A woman on screen talks from behind harsh geometric sculptures, her accusing words roasting in type… “death to fascism … death with communism …” The visuals and lighting brew a heavy elixir as Laibach’s industrialised beginnings drift satisfyingly by; even later albums like WAT get a look in with a storming rendition of “Anti-semitism”, a song clearly hatched in the wrongness of it all, marking its perpetrators as germs of disorder.
Slippery as ever, they take a deep dive into covering another artist’s work next. Now whereas most bands just cover people’s songs, Laibach totally transform them, own their creations; and their intoxicating take on Bob Dylan’s “Ballad Of A Thin Man” is no exception. A transformation that spins sinistral, your head replete with milky splats of wordage hitting the screen and dribbling downwards. Fras prowling the stage, leaning into it with expressive arms, his voice hooking into the dark tension like a talon. Marina Mårtensson’s words curling around his, like a smoky siren chorusing extra warmth that drooled over that canvas of swampy intent and razoring accent. Total genius that had my jaw on the floor, and one of four more that would rewrite the original with frightening ease.Falling back into the militarised zone, the noir-encrusted drum-led symphonic of “Brat Moj” hits another satisfying high — a muscular maul that seems to be tinted with a palpable sadness to on-screen pommel horse gymnastics. Words light up the screen — “Let’s light the bonfire in every man” — indeed. This was beyond satisfying and the punchy and very singable “Alle Gegen Alle” proved to be the icing on the cake as first-half finales go, a homage to Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft accompanied by a screen flashing mystic symbols, the reactive lighting upping its excitability.
After a fifteen minute drum / chant locked-groove interlude, they return to enact a reinvented Opus Dei in its entirety. A promised live revision that is just phenomenal — the pounding hooves of percussion, the brooding symphonics — a real tour de force. The gutsy bloat of “Leben-Tod” exploding around us to the hypnotic swing of athletic bodies and chanted barbs. That silky boom of Marina’s vocals pairing beautifully with Milan’s scorched-earth growl.Her soft Nordic vocal curves climbing that bowed guitar on “Leben Heißt Leben” to the staggered spin of rusty hatchets. Outstretched and up-tilted, her delivery adds to the regal bombast; emboldens the architecture — bloody skilful too, especially that unbelievable three-minute circular intoning on “The Great Seal”. The energised overspill and trumpet calls of “Geburt Einer Nation” continues the fun, the red glowing screen full of stiff-armed militarised snare. This was a show that just kept on giving, marching out on “Opus Dei”, applause riding high.
An appreciative curve that brought the band back on stage to deliver an encore of unexpected brilliance. The delicate beauty of “The Engine Of Survival” takes my breath clean away. The synergy between the two singers is almost telepathic at this point as the heartfelt ache of the words satellites my head. An intimate glow caught in the deep blue oceanics of the lighting and the immersive swirl of the music as that ink-smeared violence of projected faces added an edgy / unsettling slant to the affray. A melancholic and smokey cover of a Jeanne Moreau sung / Oscar Wilde scribed poem materialised in the shape of “Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves”, the Marlene Dietrich-esque delivery from Marina dancing around Fras’s deep baritone, an exploration of the ugly human animal gift-wrapped in shadowy electronica and blood running skin. The atmosphere was chillingly on point as that stabbing piano stilettoed the words to radiate a soft ballardy peacock, complete with a touching choral duet.As the kitschy earworm that is “l Want To Know What Love Is” hits, it sends a ripple of laughter and cheering across the audience. A poppy Eurovision-esque take on a track by Foreigner which in anybody else’s hands would certainly fall flat on its face; but Laibach embraced it, even injected a heightened sense of kudos into the words. As the pixelated heart kinetics zoom outward on screen, both singers soften into an affecting duet. Swirling operatics that descend into a karaoke echo of audience participation. The crowd camera-captured and projected back to us, I catch a frightening glimpse of my wobbling head that I hope never sees the light of day.
What a tune though, something that would have stayed in my head for the rest of the night if it wasn’t for the bleak outpost that was “Strange Fruit” that ended their two-hour set. The screen images morphing from 1945 Berlin to the wrecked skyline of Ukraine, readily nailed in brooding discord and that cavernous coffin of a voice, his words still crowing the back of my mind all the way home and beyond. Magnificent!-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
