For over forty years now, the Slovenian music, performance and art collective Laibach has captivated its audience with totalitarian symbolism and a constantly shifting and improbable range of musical styles from industrial to rock and neo-classical music. Laibach not only critically question political thought structures, but equally examine state and religious power systems. Additionally, culture-industrial marketing mechanisms and ideological manipulation strategies of popular culture firmly belong to their self-appointed critical mission. In this volume, essays in English and German scrutinize the elusive phenomenon that is Laibach using a variety of perspectives and approaches, ranging from the groups industrial beginnings in the early 1980s up to its 2022 project, the symphonic work Alamut.

Uwe Schütte, geboren 1967, lehrte zwei Jahrzehnte als Reader in German Studies in England und ist nun Autor, Literaturkritiker und Kulturessayist in Berlin. Er hat bislang über dreißig deutsch- bzw. englischsprachige Bücher zur Gegenwartsliteratur und Populärkultur herausgebracht, mit Schwerpunkt auf W.G. Sebald und Kraftwerk.