When I first listened to this album, it changed my life. That's how good I think it is.Don't listen to it thinking "rock" or "metal", "techno" or "pop" this is in a category of it's own. Mixing rock, jazz and a host of other styles with orchestrations so good, Wagner himself would appraise it.
Onto the tracklisting itself:
Leben Heisst Leben: A great intro, a Deutsch version of track 5 with rearranged instruments. Great vocals and arrangments with a good guitar solo (which is meant to be OTT into the extreme).
Geburt Einer Nation: Got them banned, big time. Listen to it and you'll think you know why. Listen to it a few more times (or check whom actually wrote the song, and what it is a cover version of and you realise that the song is really a sheep in wolf's clothing. Awesome song though, trumps the original like most Laibach covers.
Leben-Tod: I prefer the Peel Sessions version but still it's a worthy song.
F.I.A.T.: Awesome. From the dramatic sweeping intro to the thundering beat and rythm. The vocals are haunting as well, and the message is so clear over the song.
Opus Dei: English language version and rearrangement of track one. This song introduced me to Laibach. Such a proud song, nay, anthem. This cover of a seemingly pointless song is so great it's almost unexplainable. It's akin to a national anthem, with lyrics about "when we all give the power..." etc and a stunning arrangement to match. You have to listen to get the full experience.
Trans-National: Thundering, pounding. Again, I prefer the Peel Sessions and Occupied Europe NATO Tour versions but still, the studio version is worthy. Imagine a bullet-train from Slovenia crashing through Western Europe and you're almost there.
How The West Was Won: A guitar riff that i think Queen would later steal from them for usage in Princes Of The Universe (or is it the other way around) introduces you to a pounding song with unrelenting imagery and an industrial landscape you can taste.
The Great Seal: Concludes the album perfectly. A fantastic instrumental that again could double as a national anthem. It sweeps through beautifully and gets to the end, where Winston Churchill's legendary "we will never surrender" speech is spoken before a final burst of music. This song has recently been used to great effect in an anti-Iraq war flash film.
The four bonus tracks (excerts from "Baptism Under Triglav") will not be reviewed, but they're good.
