Engineers of Human Souls | a/political Introduction to Laibach

a/political Introduction to @LaibachOrg is the forth episode in the series. Laibach is amongst the most notorious and misunderstood music and artistic groups that have ever existed. A founding member of NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst, 1984-1992), Laibach was established in a coal mining town of Trbovlje, Yugoslavia in 1980, today on the territory of Slovenia. The band was founded shortly after the death of Josip Broz Tito, an event that triggered a wave of separatist and nationalist tensions that led to the bloody Yugoslav Wars (1991-2001). The name of the band references the historical German toponym for the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, used also during the occupation of Slovenia by Nazi Germany in the Second World War. The place and time of Laibach’s origin defined their characteristic industrial sound. In 2015, Laibach became the first-ever rock band to play in North Korea, a country seen as one of the contemporary dictatorships, in a venture captured in the documentary Liberation Day. The group consequently does not ally with any political fraction, focusing instead on the mechanisms of propaganda that apply to all. During their career, Laibach performed over a thousand concerts and sold more than two million copies of their albums, the majority of which were released with the British independent label Mute (home to Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, Kraftwerk, New Order). In 2021, their album Opus Dei was recognised by the British magazine Rock as one of the top five industrial albums of all time. Their songs infiltrated the pop culture and featured in several film productions, including Blair Witch Project (1999), Spiderman (2002), and a controversial science-fiction comedy Iron Sky 1 and 2 (2012 and 2019), telling a story of Nazis escaping to the moon after their defeat, only to return and conquer the Earth seventy years later. Follow us on Instagram | Subscribe to our newsletter | Subscribe to our channel | #Laibach #industrialmusic #industrialculture #industrialarts #contemporaryart #avantgarde #music #gothic #goth #metal