Life Is Life

Laibach formed in the mining town of Trbovlje on 1 June 1980 and chose a name designed to provoke: the German name for Ljubljana, used under Austrian rule and during the Nazi occupation. From the start they borrowed the imagery of totalitarianism, nationalism and militarism, in uniforms and black crosses, and Yugoslavia's authorities did not appreciate the joke, if it was one. Performances were cancelled, an exhibition shut down, and in 1983 police pulled the band off stage in Zagreb. Censored at home, they built a cult following and took their act abroad. In the mid-1980s they found their sharpest weapon: other people's pop songs. The Austrian pop rock band Opus had an upbeat singalong called "Live Is Life". Laibach recorded it twice for their 1987 album Opus Dei, released by Mute Records: once in German as "Leben heißt Leben" and once in English as the title track, both rearranged into dark, martial anthems sung in Milan Fras's deep bass. The trick was simple and unsettling. The same words that sounded like harmless fun in the original now sounded like a mass rally. Together with their German-language take on Queen's "One Vision", it got Laibach airplay on MTV and Britain's The Chart Show. The album later made the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. After Slovenian independence in 1991, the band went from rejected dissidents to a national cultural icon, and this cover is still the quickest way to understand what they were up to.