Opus Dei

I begun the album sipping coffee when a strange feeling came from my bowels. I rushed to the restroom, sat down and what felt like a hot soup can came rushing out of me. For a moment I felt relief. Just then a yawn followed by what sounded like an angry German came from the bowl. I was launched off the toilet and knocked to the ground from an uppercut to the anus followed by a mid air roundhouse the face. I was half naked and stunned as he appeared. A brown demon shit stood before me. I had spawned a demon poo. He tied me up gagged me and left me in the bedroom closet. I was left in sheer horror as I knew my darling Betty would be home soon. But instead of harming her all I could hear is soft German being spoken to her. For the next 24 hours all I could see, smell and hear was love makin. The nasty German kind. Once it was over a knife was held to my neck and I was unbound with a simple "shhhhhhh" coming from the angry turd demon. My dear Betty asleep he left the room, the house and what I now know the state. I found him on linked in a year later. Happy and married working as some sort of lobbyist for Pfizer. Fuck you Opus Day. You spawned a demon turd right out of me. Betty still calls his name and the skid marks remain on the sheets.

JA, JA, JA, JA! GET ME A LIGHT BEER. derbysieger. pros; 1- one of the best album covers i've ever seen 2- that voice. 3- turning europop into a rally. 4- Yogoslavian avant garde. cons; 1- you have to be in to medieval trumpets to get the most out of this album. 2 -realistically its a 3 track album and some fuck around arty shit. from now on if anyone asks me what music i am in to it will be 'Nationalistic avante garde industrial music created by yugoslavian dissidents'.

Next time I am Conjuring up holy holy demons this is the album I'll listen to

80s Rammstein w/cookie monster singing

Finally, something with a personality, with a distinct atmosphere. I was surprised how much better is their version of Life is life and the rest could be a perfect soundtrack for a dystopian movie.

Ironic fascism but questionable how much irony.

Completely different from anything we've listened to so far. I wasn't completely unfamiliar with Laibach but, if I'd ever listened to this whole album, it was thirty years ago and I didn't remember all of it. I found it compelling, frightening, and funny, and spent the day falling down a Laibach rabbit hole. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm here for.

he sounds like kermit the frog

The last 4 or 5 songs were really a drag to get though, but I found the A side to be more enjoyable. As a novice German-speaker, he's pretty easy to understand, found I could understand a good deal of it. So that was enjoyable. Not sure what I think of them though after reading about the group. Usage of Nazi iconography is pretty questionable, though I guess they were using it kind of subversively to point on the problems with state power under communism? Not sure that wears as well in 2021 post-Trump/alt-right era as it might have in 1987 behind the steel curtain.

This is a joke, right? It sounds like a homemade backtrack, in the style of the Princess Bride soundtrack, for a recruitment VHS for the secret society of neckbearded katana enthusiasts. It evokes mental images of quick cuts between scenes of swords slicing halfway through 2-liter bottles of mountain dew, and dudes with fedoras bowing. Honestly, the music itself doesn't have much to offer and I can't really think of what impact this band had on the history of music that would merit suggesting this is something that anyone has to hear in their lifetime. If anything, I'd suggest it's quite the opposite.

Uhhhhh… what am I listening to? More importantly, why am I enjoying it so much? This is utterly wackadoodle and I’m loving it! “Leben heißt Leben” seemed vaguely familiar. I did not expect the guitar solo, but it works well. The discordant ending is incredible! When “Geburt einer Nation” and “Opus Dei” came on I definitely knew the songs. Turns out a friend shared them with me on a mix tape many decades ago. I never followed up on the whole album. Queen’s “One Vision” works incredibly well sung by a Muppets-Animal sound-alike to a martial beat. The vocal delivery is delightful and the song quite danceable! Is this something I’ll listen to often? Who cares?! It’s unique. Crazy. Dramatic. Lumbering. Cinematic. Dark. It was strangely suited for listening to while I work… I really love this album!

For the first three songs I thought this would be a nailed on five. There’s something stirring about the combination of a relentless marching beat and campy synths overseen by what can only be described as the voice of a coalmine turned animate. It’s surprisingly catchy and surprisingly playful and exactly the sort of album that should be here because it’s so cocobananas that you have to listen to it. It definitely loses some oomph as the doom/authoritarian cosplay wears thin. Still, worth the journey.

I had to look up the translation for Opus Dei. Apparently, it’s latin for “two stars”.

No idea where I actually land on this one. Things I like, things I don't, so rating right in the middle.

Feels at first like a very silly parody of a german metal album, but under the surface it's actually much more meaningful that you'd think. In perspective to how long they've come today, it's pretty amazing I've never heard of them before. Also the wagnerian influences are amazing. Actually a 4...

My first album from the bottom ten. An album with such a status naturally generates apprehension, a fear that one is due for an hour of the absolutely unlistenable. It also naturally generates some pre-emptive affection, some desire to look kindly upon the underdog. Me, I like to think I've a steely spine and resilient eardrums, so I'm not phased by an album purporting to be tricky. Laibach are a Slovenian group associated with the Neue Slowenische Kunst, a Slovenian art collective formed in 1980 in what was Yugoslavia during the Cold War. Tending towards industrial and neoclassical music, Laibach frequently employs authoritarian, mechanistic and militaristic themes and imagery. This in turn has led to accusations of bad taste and dodgy political sentiments (it's not at all hard to find Laibach wearing ersatz SS uniforms minus the swastikas). I would say that it's pretty clear that Laibach belong with the firm left rather than anything right-wing (they have occasionally used works by the anti-Nazi dadaist John Heartfield on their record sleeves). I shall also mention that Laibach, as part of NSK, has formed their own country without borders, and issues passports to whoever requests them; during the breakup of Yugoslavia, some people managed to use these unofficial passports to escape the region and the violence. Anyway, on to Opus Dei. From the off, one can detect a dadaist leaning in their choice of songs they choose to adapt: Opus' Live is Life and Queen's One Vision (in Geburt einer Nation). Live is Life, that persistently naff 80s package holiday anthem beloved by mulleted Teutons and lobster-red tourists, occurs twice on the album as a harsh marching anthem with collectivist, dominative lyrics, but both times it just comes off as a comical cover of Live is Life, akin to a thrash metal take on Baby One More Time. Likewise, Geburt einer Nation just seems a suitably camp metal version of One Vision, despite the implications of an unsympathetic lyrical reading of the Queen song (one may draw an unpleasant parallel between "one man, one soul, one mission" and "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer"). The rest of the album (or rather, the rest of the vinyl edition of the album, more on that later) maintains this humorous, theatrical air and, for all its purported harshness, can be easily treated as an elaborate gag. Thus, your appreciation of the album may depend on how funny you find it. Personally, whereas it's not quite that I found the joke wearing thin, I wasn't bent double, gasping for air through the spasmic laughter. The CD version of Opus Dei featured a bonus of 4 tracks from their soundtrack album Baptism, and that's what I came here for. Devoid of Opus Dei's attempted satire, the uncompromising stamp of the last four mesmerises, successfully demonstrating the morbid, noisome allure of the despotic and warlike. With the bonus material, it appears that Laibach remembered that if you're going to be an industrial band, you shouldn't be coy about it. So, three stars for the album in total, the full five for the last four.

Well this is really not an album I was expecting from this list. Am I glad to have heard it? Yes. Can I see where it might have been influential? Also yes. Does it hold up as good music? Kinda. Sometimes. There are some highly repetitive noise tracks in this and they properly start to grate after a while. Not having read any user reviews yet, I'm almost entirely sure that there will be a swathe of 1-star "terrible"s, but there something here. The militarism is difficult to get past. I don't know if it's genuine or a pisstake, and am almost reluctant to look into it. Will I be listening to this again? Heck no. Though I do reserve the right to play people German language Queen covers from time to time.

Sounds like music you play in an 80s movie when the Soviet’s are up to no good. Interesting if not really my thing. Enjoyed the queen cover. 2/5

Truly awful.

Thank God this is over.

No thanks.

Like a soundtrack to 1984. Utterly bizarre but yet fantastic.

Because I am a purist, I only listened through track 8 (The Great Seal) because that was where the original 1987 LP ended. As far as I am concerned, there is no longer any other music. This is the only music I will listen to forever and ever. This isn't sarcasm. It is a speech impediment. Especially when you read it out loud.

I'm having a hard time taking the lyrics seriously. I don't understand German, though, so I'm aware that my inclination to giggle over them could be deeply innappropriate. He really does sound like Cookie Monster and I envision him looking/performing like Animal the Muppet (my favorite muppet!). Removing the lyrics, I can see the music being the soundtrack to a fairly intense action movie. I'll have to check out their newer stuff, especially the take on Bach's Fugue. Could do without Herz-Felde's loops. Not likely to listen again, but I doesn't make me want to peel my ears off, so, yeah.

WTF

Everyone's favourite avant-garde Slovenian art rock band, right? Honestly, this fucking rules. Taking the dumbest dogshit song by Austrian no-hopers Opus and covering it - twice? Turning Queen's 'One Vision' into a mock blood-and-soil military march? Finishing up with a quote from Churchill? Superb. Wish more bands had the guts to do something quite as cerebral and satirical as this. Maybe Devo, maybe the Residents. Points the way towards what popular music could be.

I was intimidated by the looks of this album, but I had a great time listening. I wonder if I missed the point, though, because I had a difficult time taking it seriously. Nonetheless, I totally dug it!

The tracks "Opus Dei" and "Geburt einer Nation" were in heavy rotation on my friends' and my college-era mixtapes. I loved the subversive take on pop music. There may have been some very exuberant sing-alongs with the former. Listening to this album for the first time, I was a bit surprised to hear "Leben Heißt Leben" since it's an entirely different version of the song I'd known. (By the way, I knew neither of those previously mentioned songs by their proper titles. Not everyone was good about writing proper song titles and artists on their mixtapes in the 80s, which was a pet peeve of mine.) But it was delightful, and the "proper" version of "Life is Life" was thankfully still there as well. I'd love to write a proper review of this and more specifically why I love it. Suffice it to say that I think it's magnificent. We needed this desperately in 1987.

Il s'agira sans doute de ma note la plus étonnante au sein de cette escroquerie de générateur, mais j'ai bel et bien passé un moment d'anthologie en compagnie de ces Slovènes germanophones. De l'arrivée des chars d'assaut à la plantation du drapeau sur le territoire ennemi, je me suis tout simplement régalé bien qu'étant de nature non-belligérante. La seule personne que j'avais tabassé dans ma vie jusqu'alors était Robert. Or, depuis cet album, je ne compte même plus le nombre de personnes laissées en knock-out sur ma route. Comme quoi…

This one's kind of out there, but I'm going back to listen to it again. It went well with yard work, so I'm going to see how it holds up when I'm paying attention.

I have no idea why I enjoyed this. But I did.

I do, as it happens, appreciate melodramatic rock tropes harshly intonated at me in German (see Die Toten Hosen, and, likely, Rammstein whom I figure I would probably like although have not yet had the pleasure). So it goes here, although if I were to pick a 1985 Eurotrash one-hit-wonder as the basis of a quasi-fascist song cycle, I would have gone with Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy". This is a bit one-note, but fun enough to pass the time. As Slovenian exports go, it's infinitely preferable to the execrable Melania Trump.

Well-constructed, clearly in good faith, but industrial is not my jam: the rhythm is too redolent of a man trying to cross a road discretely after catastrophically filling his trousers. Expect it sounds better in a bierkeller.

Truly ridiculous, but I think knowingly. I had a blast listening to this and laughed out loud multiple times. Now, is it GOOD? Tough to say.

kind of enjoyed tbh

Haha wtf

That was a weird one. Do I love it or hate it? I don't even know, but it was certainly different.

That time Yello got totally munted on Scrumpy Jack and PCPs and went to a Nazi bouncy-castle party to have a belching competition with Fasolt and Fafner. This is my just desserts for complaining about stupefyingly boring artists like Green Day and Taylor Swift being on this list. I mean, I asked for it. Funny once, but actually shit.

This is definitely one of the strangest albums on this list. We start with the almost military (or perhaps sea-shanty) Leben heist Leben, with a dramatic, artificial drumbeat and a team of bellowing male vocalists. The guitar solo is pretty cool, incorporating some staple 80s elements like slow, post-psychedelia-esque guitar picking and blurry, interweaving guitar in the background. The atonal organ and backing guitars create a weird doomy atmosphere that isn't quite synchronous with the rest of the song. Many of the following tracks are similar. Also common to most tracks is a strange half-brass-half-synth sound that makes me more uncomfortable than anything else. It's incredibly weird. Like an army of nationalist cyborgs is approaching and spewing propaganda. Geburt einer Nation, the second track, is incredibly similar to Queen's One Vision – as I'm sure was intended – but it's not nearly as good as the work of Her Majesty. The interacting gravelly and nasally vocals are goofy, but they're worse than goshdarn Freddie Mercury's voice. The synths are comparatively lower in the mix, and the very simple drumming is pushed to the forefront (not ideal). I did enjoy this track, though, if only because the original Queen material was so strong. The track F.I.A.T. takes the album's artificial feel to the extreme, even placing a robotic filter over the monotone vocals and using some kind of string-keyboard. It isn't exactly bad, but it feels like it's trying to be alienating. Something something dictatorship nationalism. Opus Dei, the title track, does the whole "fascism rock" gig best. All of the tracks after Opus Dei are confused and not very memorable. Herz-Felde, with its annoying tape-looped vocals, is essentially the end of Another Brick In The Wall Part 2, but for nearly five minutes. It's the weakest track on the album. Jagerspiel isn't much better, essentially being a sound collage with a fast tape-looped 6/8 rhythm on repeat for more than 7 minutes. That album cover, though? Badass. 2/5 Key tracks: Geburt einer Nation, Opus Dei

Only two songs in and I'm resisting the desire to march, march, march away. I just realized I hate industrial music more than I hate zydeco.

Incredibly difficult to get through. There are some musical aspects to this, but it sacrifices those moments for the sake of art. That being said, I don't like the art.

Well that was awful

Vert der ferk?

I feel like I just listened to an hour of nazi propaganda

Oh hell no

Nope

Horrifically bad, sounds like a Slovenian exorcism, and an unsuccessful one.

what the fuck

Just a slog to get through. Repetitive and uninteresting. Really disappointed in this one.

What a bloated, heaping pile of gravel-filled horse excrement. The anti-fascist/fascist b.s. only masks the pointlessness of this soulless gurgle of acid. This may be the absolute worst album I've ever listened to... and I DID listen to it! The whole wretched thing! I earnestly wanted to discover why it was on this list. I mean, for the sake of it, the metalhead in me wanted to relate to the tone, the ambiance, the themes... but there's no way into this self-serving chamber echoing farts. Negative zero -- and that's being kind.

Garbage

Hard pass.

hilariously moving, perfectly constructed, heavier than heaven

Different - and crucially fun - it's almost like a pop record rather than the metal it's presented as. 4.6

This is an album and band that's MEANT to make you feel uncomfortable. Not sure why this is marked as metal/hardrock though. Have you ever wondered how much Queen's "One Vision" seemingly shares a lot of similarities to certain 1930 speeches when translated into German? (Ein Mensch, Ein Ziel, Eine Erde und ein Volk!) Have you ever thought what would happen if you REALLY listen to the lyrics of Opus' 'Life is Life' and put it into a Nietzschean / Wagner type style, complete with a campy totalitarian aesthetic? Laibach is disturbing, thought-provoking and unsettling. And it's supposed to be. And a band that's worth listening more of. Albums like Spectre, Kapital or Wir Sind Das Volk are fully worth it.

Rating this a five, not because I think every song on it is great but because I really the vibe the whole album puts out.

I used to like this when I was younger. Haven't listened to it in a while, but I'm happy to say I still like it.

Ah yes, love this so much, right up my alley. Such a great story behind this band too, love it. Fave: Leben heißt Leben -- it just sets the mood perfectly.

These guys rock so hard. The album has industrial; it has art, all with an underneath of satire.

Oh yeah, this was a missing puzzle piece in my musical landscape. I've got a bunch of "martial industrial" music that makes great WH40K background music, and I guess this is where that genre sprang from. I'm guessing this is also what Tool were riffing on with their track "Die Eier Von Satan"... 😆 It's kinda strange I hadn't checked these guys out already as I'm a fan of industrial music generally - I guess the fashy aesthetic put me off giving them a chance. Glad to learn that they're satirizing fascism rather than it being in earnest. Fave tracks - "Geburt Einer Nation" is great - gets the message across loud and clear! "Leben Heißt Leben" and "Opus Dei" work well together. "Trans-national" is cool, and I dig the frenetic "Jägerspiel" too.

Felt like Rammstein vocals but with 80s NBA game intro audio on network tv

the exact type of band (and album) which makes me really happy we started this project — dadaist yugoslavian industrial music including a queen cover (and they also did a full album that’s just industrial covers of the beatles’ let it be???? more please). just incredible all around. viewed as an art piece, it’s one of the best i’ve ever seen. it’s also pretty listenable!

There have been just a very small handful amount of albums that has jarred me so hard in a good way. This was one of those albums. This album is so unique and very engaging. This gives me hope that one day Rammstein will pop up on this list. Laibach is fantastic and I am now a fan. 5! TBz 1. Leben Heist Leben 2. Opus Dei 3. Gebert Einer Nation 4. Leben - Tod 5. Herz-Felde

Incredibly cinematic. I think this album is vital after listening to it, and I would argue that this obviously inspired several other projects (Rammstein feels like an obvious one, but stuff like Sigur Rós and other atmospheric projects definitely seem to have similar lineage musically). Either way, this is an album that I think everyone should digest at some point.

This is one of the coolest bands ever and a superb industrial record. „Leben heißt leben“ is still one of my alleine favourites.

Klassiker!

Unexpectedly heavy, Rammsteinish?

Love it

I love it. Who wouldn't love Slovenian, totalitarian industrial music. Losers, that's who! Also, great Queen cover.

Holy shit this is amazing. Rammstein + Borat + Art of Noise. Seven stars at least. Might be my new favorite band.

5/5

1987 - German. Trumpets! Industrial music; Martial industrial; Neoclassical Dark Wave

Was not expecting a cover of life is life to go so hard. Super cool album. I need more Slovenian metal.

Not perfect, but weird, interesting, and well done. Amazing music. The only thing lacking was some of the vocals. 4 1/2 🌟

I was first introduced to this band when they released Kapital, an album that I quite liked and have listened to many times since. The rest of their discovery has always been a bit of a mixed bag for me, but I might have found a new favourite with Opus Dei. The two versions of Life Is Life were familiar of course, as well as a couple of other songs, but this sounded very impressive overall.

Once, when I was young I found a copy of this cassette in the road, while walking, and that was my first exposure to Laibach, and the industrial music genre. This tape blew my mind. The most esoteric thing I had been listening to prior to this discovery was the Swiss Godfathers of Electronica, Yello (whose absence from this list, by the way, is unforgivable). Mind blowing that they managed to make this album while trapped in the Soviet Union (now modern day Slovenia). It broadened my horizons about the notion about what music could be, and urged me on a path to discovering all kinds of bold and adventurous music. It was a path that would lead me over the next few years to Ministry, KMFDM, Die Warzau, Skinny Puppy, Sister Machine Gun and countless other acts that were within the sight of the industrial genre. This is definitely one of the formative acts and albums that impacted not only the industrial genre, but eventually the genres of dance and pop. Their Wagnerian and Kratwerk influences shine through in a completely. new sound.

Rating it 5 because this is the first album where the music is truly unique and took me off guard. life is life cover killed me

Definitely heard of laibach before, but never listened. Really cool industrial music similar to rammstein. Read up on them a little bit and their history and concepts are also quite interesting. Some of the songs are bit too repetitive for my taste but overall I enjoyed it. Feel like child laborer in during the industrial revolution listening to this. 😋 Will listen again. 8/10

Early industrial fun! 4.5 rounded up

Epic goed om een keertje gehoord te hebben

Cool album big sounds, catchy first song. 1st non English album on the list I've had and I'm impressed

I enjoyed the overall vibe of this album, it made me want to start a revolution which is always a good sign of a good album. Who doesn't like some medieval trumpets. There weren’t any stand out tracks because all the tracks were just really good. I think the reason I like this album is because of all the queen influences, but I honestly didn't expect to like this album as much as I did.

Okay I have no idea what just happened but I absolutely loved it.

Better than I thought it would be!

The lyrics of Queen's "One Vision" certainly carry another kind of symbolism when performed in German by Slovenian industrial export #1.

Pleasantly surprised! Powerful, catchy rhythms, cool sounding vocals, interesting melodies, variety. I liked this! The main messages I caught felt very pro-community and anti-war / establishment.

8/10 really fun industrial rock well made and really interesting but it has a sound that feels very… political, I guess? I can only imagine what the lyrics would mean if they were translated to english

Interesting - can see where rammenstein got their chops. Wholly entertaining industrial - and makes sense given the bands history. Great dark humour too - but Milan Frans’ vocals are the standout here. Kind of starts petering out toward the end though

73. Oh, que majestosa criação, a da autoridade! Morra a anarquia, pim! MotA: Opus Dei "Leben heisst leben"

The spiritual father of Rammstein. Great listen, kind of hard to believe that it came out in 1987.

Some remarkable musicality in this one. Classical meets proto-Rammstein. And from such an underrepresented region in music. Touching in some ways too. The themes are elevated by the sounds.

This is just about peak Laibach, which is pretty great. Does anyone do percussion better?

Sounds of rammstein before rammstein, enjoyable, but don't have time for a better description

This rules.

Surprisingly excellent

I’m in the minority for this but I loved this. It’s weird enough but not in your face weird.

Industrial is not a genre that I've ever really listened to having dismissed it as the soundtrack of every decadent, dark, bare brick nightclub, that's probably owned by a vampire. At times it could be Eurovision, and there's a definite 80's synth vibe. It's fun though, and the use of some John Heartfield art, along with some easy to understand German bumped it from a 3 to a 4.

yeah this rules

Wow! Majestetisk. Jeg trodde jeg skulle hate dette, men den gang ei. Åpenbar inspirasjonskilde for Rammstein, dette blir nok en go-to når jeg trenger litt sint musikk. Leben heisst leben!

The German link between Kraftwerk and Rammstein