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Performer: Laibach
Producer: Iztok Turk; Laibach; Umek
Distributor: Caroline Distribution

Notes: Laibach includes: Vasja Ulrih, Tamara Zagar. Additional personnel: Matej Mrsnik (guitar); Tomi Meglic (background vocals). Despite its famously fascist sensibilities, subversive cover song work, and activism through guerilla art, Slovenia's Laibach still roots the majority of its recorded output in the two-dimensional, tinny grind of industrial music. Their latest LP is no different. English and German-language tracks shoulder each other for space inside the cramped compartments of WAT, yawning to allow rusty drops of standing water to fall into their mouths. Primitive drum machines pop and click behind Milan Fras' apocalyptic, determined growl, guttural voices and ethereal choirs drift in and out of the gloom, and vibrating synth lines slash between WAT's mechanistic beats, forming anti-melodies from torn shrapnel. "Achtung!," "Ende," and "Now You Will Pay" illustrate Laibach's point. "Barbarians are coming," Fras grumbles in the latter. "With knives in their pockets/And bombs in their hands/They'll burn down your cities," he continues, and the shrills of a choir then reiterate the point ("Barbarians! Barbarians!"). It's like the rampaging introduction of Conan the Barbarian, re-imagined as a black PVC nightmare of Teutonic justice. While there's certainly a legitimate agenda wrapped up in lyrics like "We don't seduce with melodies/We're not here to please you" and "From superstars/To the antichrist" (from the title track), it's difficult to piece it out while stepping over the flotsam of uninspired instrumentation that floats in the stagnant, ankle-deep water at the bottom of WAT. In a completely unlikely (and certainly unwanted) comparison, Laibach suggests Christian rock in the sense that both parties put message before music. Laibach has a long history of nonconformity and jarring social consciousness-raising. Unfortunately, its proto-industrial delivery system is hopelessly outdated. It could be that the music's indifference is purposeful, another way of promoting the band's guerilla entertainment. But just like bad performance art, suggesting that WAT is bad on purpose doesn't excuse its aesthetic shortsightedness. ~ Johnny Loftus

Q (10/03, p.108) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...WAT is absurd yet serious, and Laibach's enigma is safe..." The Wire (01/04, p.38) - Included in Wire's "50 Records Of The Year [2003]" Mojo (Publisher) (10/03, p.110) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Pop music doesn't come more brilliant and ridiculous than Laibach..."

The Slovenian music and art collective Laibach offer a multi-media experience that is equal parts agit-prop political rally, Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, and stomping industrial-rock show. The band, which was founded under Communism in the early 1980s, is notorious for appropriating controversial images--including both fascist and Christian iconography--to confront and challenge complacency in society. Although Laibach's music is most easily categorized as industrial, they are also considered one of the originators of "martial," a stomping hybrid of rock, classical, traditional marches and other European folk forms. The highly innovative band continued to record, perform, and provoke well into the new millennium.

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