Spectre is Laibach’s first studio album since 2006’s widely acclaimed conceptual album Volk with 14 versions of national anthems including the one of their own NSK art collective, which declared its own virtual state in 1991. In the meantime Laibach also released the side projects Laibachkunstderfuge (2008) and Iron Sky: The Original Film Soundtrack (2012).

With Spectre, once again, Laibach has re-invented itself in a newly born, yet polished and solid, formation. And, as is now customary, the band calls into question all the rigid and cemented interpretations (and prejudices) about itself, about its music, intentions, philosophy and ideology. And yet, despite everything, the new album resonates as a real and full-blooded Laibachian work and nothing else. One can say that with this album Laibach has created a big, important, and dangerous step forward. For, as Laibach themselves describes Spectre, it literally sounds like a political manifesto in poetic form.

The magnificent and serious, yet formally playful, fresh and provocative album Spectre steps out of its own shadow and brings an array of new songs and ideas with which Laibach demonstrates that it masterfully manages its position.

But Laibach is more then just music. The band is famous for its uniqueness and provocative symbolic behaviour, which often brings to mind totalitarian states and which, especially at the beginning, caused many problems for the band. Laibach is distinct for their theatrical performances on stage. The band pushed many boundaries with their image and costume choices in the past– from partisan army look that reminiscent of a Tyrol to costumes resembling Nazi uniforms or those of the Yugoslav National Army. As Guardian wrote “Laibach just might be the most absurd group ever to have existed”. In the last three and a half decades their dark appearances became their distinction.

Besides creating a big sensation and enraging the public, the band also thrilled many supporters of the avant-garde. Since then, the band’s involvement in art and music has been featured in numerous articles, television and radio shows and literary works. It is 34 years since Laibach’s existence; the band was founded in 1980 in the mining town of Trbovlje in Zasavje region of Slovenia. In this period Laibach survived everything: Salonica and Isonzo Front, WWII, Brezhnev, Kennedy, Tito, 80’s, 90’s, 100’s, numerous names of domestic and foreign politics, the fall of Yugoslavia and the war that followed, the excitement of the independence and the entry to the E.U. of Slovenia. As Laibach says, by surviving Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Europe and NSK state, it actually survived itself.

Polona Prešeren, SINFO