Rarely Heard: Laibach - Life Is Life

Laibach is a Slovenian band formed in 1980, when Slovenia was still part of Communist Yugoslavia, provocatively using the German expression for Ljubljana as their name. They are the musical part of the artist collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) which utilized and merged socialist realism, bombastic Nazi art techniques and Italian futurism to an aesthetic of their own. In Yugoslavia they soon faced a total ban and reached dissident status.  A prank that exemplifies their approach: In Yugoslavia their was a competition to create the best poster for an official Socilaist event. NSK won the first prize with their contribution and afterwards revealed that their poster was not a creation of their own, but a Third Reich poster. Similarly, their artistic approach reached some cult status in the West, but were mostly misunderstood due to their provocative political ambiguity (which actually wasn't that ambiguous). Sadly, Rammstein stole their musical concept of bombastic industrial, but without the political bite (and intelligence), and became a giant international success. I saw them live in the mid 80s and was very impressed. I especially like their take on one of the stupidest songs of mankind, Opus' Life Is Life; their version clearly reveals the true meaning of the song. Their version in German, Leben heißt Leben, is even better, but is not available as clip (only live).