Laibach: Francia

For France's national day, please be upstanding for a rendition of the national anthem.

The version, obviously a little different from the original, comes from the 2004 Laibach album Volk, which included their interpretations 13 countries, as well as one for their NSK multinational state.

Their version of La Marseillaise relocates its struggle and conflict to the banlieus, an urban and modern version of the marching song
But what exactly are they dong in this version of the song? Is it pro-French or anti? Right wing or left wing? Laibach, and the arts organisation they are part of (NSK) have always kept their agenda deliberately unclear, to the point that encouraging an interrogation of their political agenda - and by extension the political agenda of art in general - is probably their actual agenda.

Laibach are a band that thrives on ambiguity. Originating in the then-communist Yugoslavia, they fell foul of the state by putting forward (and winning) a national art competition by submitting a piece of work that was a slightly altered piece of Nazi propaganda.

Their criticism of the Yugoslav state gave them a pariah status in their home country, but their apparent identification with - and seeming celebration of - communism led to criticism in the west.

Over the subsequent years they have remained critics of totalitarianism,  while adopting its aesthetics. Following the collapse of state socialism in eastern Europe, they have sought out other less explicit systems of social control for investigation.

Their album of covers of apparently innocuous pop songs rendered into totalitarian anthems (NATO) mocked the illusionary freedoms promised by a pop culture tied to a multinational industry. Other targets have been capitalism as itself an instrument of repression (Kapital) and their offshoot band 300,000 VK releasing collections focused on the Pope (Also Sprach John Paul II) and Bill Gates (Bill Gates Hard Drive.)

Along the way there have been covers of the Beatles Let it Be album and an album of collected cover versions of The Rolling Stones Sympathy for the Devil.

Meanwhile they put forward a visual style that took elements of the artwork of repression, socialist realism, 1930s European romanticism, Soviet experimentalism and totalitarianism.
While there is no shortage of bonehead bands peddling a redundant right-wing agenda, Laibach have always been more than just Triumph of the Will fetishists. Rather than just celebrating the unacceptable agenda of repression, by adopting the mannerisms of the most obvious forms of social control and applying these mechanisms to the more subtle means with which they are employed today, they expose the fact that while the uniforms and heavy handed politics of fear might not be in place any more, ideas like freedom and democracy remains at best aspirations. 

Of course, concepts like 'Freedom' and 'Democracy' and whether they have themselves any value are questions that are also raised.
All the time they've been producing an increasingly sophisticated industrial rock, in many ways like Rammstein but with a degree in fine art and philosophy. Most recently their work was used in the soundtrack of the Finnish comedy film Iron Sky.  For all their austere appearance, they know fine well that there's comedy value in their shtick.

The Volk album includes this track Francia, along with variants of the German anthem, Russian, English Turkish, Chinese and others, as well as the anthem of Israel. The versions include subversive touches like mixing the Israeli anthem with the Palestinian, the Russian anthem with lyrics from the Internationale, the use of the old Yugoslavian anthem for the anthem of 'Slovania.'

Do Laibach celebrate nationalism and the existence of the nation state? Do they criticise those who follow their countries like the sheep on the cover of the CD?

Are we to salute the flag? Burn it? Appreciate it as a work of abstract Suprematist art?

Probably all these things at once. The only certainty is that they will provoke more questions.