Laibach have announced details of “Strange Fruit”, a three-track single release that follows their recent single “The Future” (originally by Leonard Cohen). This interpretation of the Billie Holiday protest song has featured in their ongoing Opus Dei tour (which continues into 2025), and precedes the band’s “Opus Dei Revisited” double album (out 13 December on Mute).

“Strange Fruit” tracklisting

1. Strange Fruit (03:06)
2. Strange Fruit (Alternate version) (03:00)
3. Strange Fruit (Live from Lublin, May 28th 2024) (03:19)

Watch the video for Laibach’s “Strange Fruit” below.

Billie Holiday originally recorded her version of “Strange Fruit” on 20 April 1939. The track, originally written by a Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol (using the pseudonym Lewis Allen), was in response to lynching in US southern states. A year later, Meeropol, a socialist, was called to testify before a committee investigating communism and asked whether the US Communist Party had paid him to write “Strange Fruit”. Later, in 1999, it was named the song of the century by Time magazine.

Laibach go on to explain: “There’s something that’s still very radioactive about the song; it’s still relevant because race is still relevant. The impulses that Meeropol was talking about are very much still with us, on the front pages of our newspapers and across our social media every day. For us, ‘Strange Fruit’ evokes racial injustice, representing not just lynchings, but racism generally.” They expand, “Racism is a virus that mutates, taking on different forms as it adapts to a changing environment. Its mutation is made harder to observe by it being deeply embedded, not only in our traditions and institutions, but also in our unconscious lives.”

“Strange Fruit” follows May’s remastered edition of Laibach’s “Opus Dei”. Their 12-month salute to their 1987 album continues in December with the release of “Opus Dei Revisited”, which features two new interpretations of the album – one by Laibach, and the other by original producer Rico Conning.

Laibach “Opus Dei Revisited” Tour – 2025

• 7 Feb – Ljubljana, Kino Šiška, SI
• 16 Feb – Krakow Kwadrat, PL
• 18 Feb- Ostrava, Barrak, CZ
• 19 Feb – Vienna, Arena, AT
• 20 Feb – Jena, F-Haus, DE
• 21 Feb – Sittard, Poppodium Volt, NL
• 22 Feb – London, Islington Assembly Hall, UK
• 23 Feb – Manchester, Ritz, UK
• 24 Feb – Southampton, The 1865, UK
• 25 Feb – Bristol, Trinity Centre, UK
• 27 Feb – Lausanne, Les Docks, CH
• 28 Feb – Bologna, Link, IT
• 1 March – Nova Gorica, SNG Nova Gorica, SI
• 4 March – Skopje, Macedonian Philharmonic MK
• 5 March – Athens, Gazarte, GR
• 6 March – Sofia, Pirotska 5, BG
• 7 March – Bucharest, Quantic Club, RO
• 8 March – Beograd, Dom Omladine, RS
• 21 March – Maribor, Narodni dom, SI

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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(Photo by Valter Leban) Out on March 25 on Mute is an all new Laibach album, “Wir sind das Volk (Ein Musical aus Deutschland)”. The record will be available on digital platforms as well as a deluxe CD format with extensive sleeve notes. A double vinyl edition will follow on June 10.

The album collates music from the acclaimed theatrical production “Wir sind das Volk” (“We are the People”), which premiered at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) theater in Berlin on February 8, 2020. Two more shows were performed before the production was halted due to the pandemic. In 2021 Laibach opened the Klagenfurt Festival with a Slovenian version of the same production and performed two more sold out shows at Ljubljana’s Kino Šiška.

Performances will resume in March 2022 at Berlin’s HAU with more confirmed for Zagreb, Ljubljana, Hamburg, Maribor and in the Cultural Capital of Europe, Novi Sad. Full details will be announced soon.

Here’s already the video for “Ich will ein Deutscher sein”.

About the “Wir sind das Volk” theatrical production

“Wir sind das Volk” is based upon the writings of Heiner Müller (1929-1995). Laibach’s own association with the theater began in 1984 when they composed music for Heiner Müller’s “Quartet”, a play that was presented at the Slovenian National Theatre in Ljubljana. The following year they met Müller in Berlin who suggested that they collaborate. Müller went on to use Laibach’s music in a production, but the collaboration never happened until the head of the International Heiner Müller Society, Anja Quickert, proposed a posthumous project based on Müller’s texts.

Laibach explain: “We followed Heiner Müller’s own strategy of cutting and rearranging the material, taking his text and putting it into another context, rebooting it with music, in order to drag the audience into it or alienate them from it. Music unlocks the emotions and is therefore a great manipulative tool and a powerful propagandistic weapon. And that’s why a combination of Heiner Müller, who saw theatre as a political institution, and Laibach, can be nothing else but a musical.”

Quickert goes on to say this: “This project finally brings together what should have happened a long time ago: Laibach and the German playwright and poet Heiner Müller together. The myth of the nation cannot be buried as long as ghosts undermine its foundation. ‘Dialogue with the dead must not be interrupted until it is revealed which part of the future was buried with them.’ Welcome to the abyss of the nation!”

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Genre/Influences: Cinematographic, Experimental.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Maribor is a project originally set up by  Stefano Gentile. He got the help of Giuseppe Verticchio (Nimh, Hall Of Mirrors), Andrea Marutti (Amon, Hall Of Mirrors), Gianluca Favaron (Under The Snow, Zbeen), Maurizio Bianchi and Pierpaolo Zoppo (Mauthausen Orchestra). The debut album “De Immenso” was released in 2011 while two more tracks were released the same year on the “X”-cassette.
Pierpaolo Zoppo passed Away in 2012 so “Cross” has been released in his memory. Some tracks are taken from “X”. “Cross” has been announced as the final Maribor release.

Content: The album features 5 long duration tracks, which have been meticulously created. The guitar playing has something abstract, creating an explicit Cinematographic style. The tracks have been accomplished now with boiling noises and then by dreamy atmospheres. The last part of the work becomes darker, like exposing an hostile sphere accentuated by repetitive guitar sequences. But the final composition has something dreamy-like again.

+ + + : Maribor is/was a kind of collective featuring different artists. You can feel some chemistry between all musicians resulting in a poignant and evasive composition. Both last cuts have a strong visual appeal, especially the darker approach of “X – Part Two” is worthy of examination. There’s a cool kind of incoming signal/tune running through this cut, which makes it chilling. Over the whole album I like the way the guitar has been played and used, creating an atmospheric sphere. I also have to say a word about the cool digipak format of this work.

– – – : This kind of album appeals for a true visual addition like a movie, theatre, photography..

Conclusion: “Cross” clearly sounds as a collaborative work between soul mates.

Best songs: “X – Part Two”, “Us And Them”.

Rate: (6½).

Label: http://store.silentes.it /  www.facebook.com/standadischi

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

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