Live at The Key Club

Hollywood, California

September 26, 2008

Review and Photos by Travis Baumann

Laibach are an extremely unique outfit in every regard and have never done anything conventional or expected in their musical career that spans the better part of three decades.

Each album is a concept of its own but it goes far beyond typical band's ideas of conceptual albums to say the least.  

I have seen Laibach many times now over the years and although the very first time is still my very favorite, I have seen some crazy things at their shows including the setting fire to a Napoleanic Monument decades old in East Germany while fireworks blasted over their heads.

This most recent album from them was a peculiar one even by their standards. While always having a political slant, to the point of seriously starting their own nation of NSK, this album took a different approach to their repurposing existing music.

The album is titled "Volk" or People in German and is in fact the name of the German National Anthem. Yes, that's right, the entire album is Laibach doing various national anthems from countires all around the globe.

They do Deuschtland, Russia, China, Japan, Spain, you name it, they do it and they of course put that deep, dark spin where just the presentation of the lyrics themselves in new context with the electronic stylings of Laibach, make you take a completely different look at what is being said as a song making a statement about each nation.

The album can be quite moody and a little down tempo so I wasn't sure how it would translate into a live experience and in true Laibachian fashion, they do the entire album straight through and then do the previous album as well, which was very minimal in electronics and percussively heavy but still a danceable album and more suited to live play.

For the first half of the set, the band consisted of two keyboardists, a drummer, a woman playing additional keyboards and handling all of the female vocals and of course Ivan, the figurehead of the band and the only long standing member present for the evening.

Many of the songs featured solely the woman singing very etherial pieces in many languages with only minimal keyboards. Being a club, it was a little difficult to listen fully as there were many conversations and the like going on around you.

They had two projectors actually placed right on stage throwing images up across two adjacent screens at the back of the stage. The imagery was cool and new for this tour, as they usually have a cold grey atmosphere from their Nato and Kapitalism days. The projectors placed right on stage and obstructing the view of the screens themselves was odd but still functional.

Once they completed Volk they moved on to the previous album, WAT or We Are Time, and two female drummers who also sang, set up standing drums at the front of the stage and started pounding out rhythms and things got much livelier.

Not to take anything away from their performance of the Volk album. The woman who sang and played keyboards, at times the only one on the stage, definitely was talented to the extreme. She had a perfect voice, can sing in ten or more languages and can play her own piano and keyboard pieces.

I really love Laibach for their statements but also Ivan's voice and delivery are high points in a concert goers life and I wanted a lot more of him so the latter portion of the show fullfilled that desire.

My favorite song of the set was most definitely "Satanic Versus" which was so altered that I didn't realize that was the song they were playing until nearly half way through. It was really cool. I also enjoyed "Hell Symmetry" and "Now You Will Pay" off of WAT.

One thing of detriment though was the crowd was the least friendly, least easy going crowd I have seen in Los Angeles in nearly twenty years no matter which genre.

I don't know if is the intellectual quotent and they just take themselves and life too seriously or what, but people had attitude problems galore and it did bring down the experience.

Luckily I recognized none of the audience, Laibach always has a way of drawing people out of the woodwork who are normally never there to support any sort of local scene or less notarized bands but if that is what they have to bring it is best they don't go out much.

After they finished up WAT they left the stage and though people chanted, stamped and yelled, they did not come back out.  Instead they played pre recorded versions of classics like "Life is Life" while the video projectors played the set list backwards followed by the member roster and finally just a huge jumble of credits which we all sat staring at while the songs played.

We all really hoped they would come out and do one more song from an older album, my personal all time favorite is "Message From a Black Star", so of course I was wishing to no avail it could be that but hell I would have taken anything at that point, but no... we were left to wander out into the night with a little bit of a let down at the end.

Several times it seemed liked Ivan was rather disgusted with the poor turn out and the attitudes of those that did come and it wasn't his usual all business, militay stage persona misconstrued.

I would have to say I do love Laibach and I of course will see them again because every time is different in some way but I would have to say this was the least fun of the times I have experienced so far due mostly to the audience members but also to the slow dark tone of the first half of the set.  

I fully understand their intentions of presenting albums in their entirety but it quite simply just doesn't always go over as intended. I normally dread opening acts, especially if not paired well but tonight there was no opener at all and maybe this crowd could have used something to break the ice and get some of the pent up aggressions out ahead of time.