No, I won't pretend that I was familiar with Noctiferia, who have been around for over twenty-five years now, before this album.
And yes, even when I ordered "Reforma" I was quite sceptical and everything but convinced that I would actually like it.
NOCTIFERIA - Reforma - Tribute To Laibach (LP) (2021)
Let's not wait to address the elephant in the room: this is a Laibach cover album! And anyone, who has only the faintest surface level contact with Laibach knows that they are the ones doing the cover versions "new originals", which make most old originals look like shallow hulls in comparison.
So if you're not a phenomenal piano player and actual past Laibach member in personal union and you're trying your skills on re-interpreting Laibach, it's almost no question that you will inevitably fail. And as a fan you probably know this yourself right from the start. The challenge here cannot be to avoid failure, but instead to fail with maximal amount of dignity.
The next obstacle after the need for this realization is the choice of songs. You don't want to play any of the Laibach material which itself is based on the work on other rock bands, classical composers, national anthems etc., only original Laibach originals so to speak. That already narrows the possible selection down.
Then you also don't want your choice to be too obvious, right?
From what I've heard so far - which admitedly isn't that much - I would categorize Noctiferia as a band mixing grooving death core with rammsteiny Härte and industrial metal elements, but also some low djentisms and other extreme metal influences. It's nothing I hate on, but it wouldn't typically stir my interest very much either.
It's metal though, so Laibach's "Jesus Christ Superstars" album is just as off the table as the earlier stuff that actually inspired 80% of the Rammstein sound.
If you look at an album title like "Slovenska Morbida" or some of their cover artworks, it's obvious that Noctiferia has always been influenced by Laibach aesthetics. And most important, because probably a huge advantage for this project: they are actually from Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Ultimately the mix on "Reforma" mostly consists of tracks from the heavy, yet electronic albums "WAT" and "Spectre", plus the "Revisted" version of "Smrt Za Smrt" and a rendition of "Nova Akropola", where Noctiferia stray the most from the original, with a completely fresh arrangement including some guest saxophone.
If I could switch some tracks for deeper cuts - like something from "Kapital", maybe? - it would be "Tanz Mit Laibach" (too obvious "hit single"), as well as "Smrt Za Smrt", because that live rendition with orchestra, which is also featured on "Laibach Revisted" as a bonus track, is just one of the darkest, heaviest, mightiest pieces of music ever recorded, so the aforementioned failure is brutal, no matter how good you're doing it.
And Noctiferia actually do a great job on both of those tracks. "Tanz" even has none other than Mayhem / Sunn O))) vocalist Attila Csihar on the microphone, probably the number one pick to impersonate Milan Fras in the whole realm of metal.
Of course there's one more guest vocalist on the album, right in the opener "Now You Will Pay" and it almost feels like a circle closing, because David Vincent has tried incorporating his Laibach influences into Morbid Angel several times - to widely varying degrees of musical success and acceptance among fans.
Personally I'll always be grateful to Morbid Angel not only for their own death metal classics, but also for going on and on about Laibach in the liner notes for "Blessed Are The Sicked" - which in fact led me to listen to that "Kapital" copy which had somehow mystically ended up in the local heavy metal record store...
But back to Noctiferia: When I first listened to "Now You Will Pay" and "No History" I thought that their technique would mainly be to change the tempo and rhythm a bit and just put some typical "metal cover version" guitars and screaming on top of it. But I trusted Laibach, who promoted this release and ordered a signed vinyl copy anyway.
Good on me, because on repeated spins however I'm finding more and more ideas and details in all tracks and so far my enjoyment of this album still keeps increasing.
The next obstacle after the need for this realization is the choice of songs. You don't want to play any of the Laibach material which itself is based on the work on other rock bands, classical composers, national anthems etc., only original Laibach originals so to speak. That already narrows the possible selection down.
Then you also don't want your choice to be too obvious, right?
From what I've heard so far - which admitedly isn't that much - I would categorize Noctiferia as a band mixing grooving death core with rammsteiny Härte and industrial metal elements, but also some low djentisms and other extreme metal influences. It's nothing I hate on, but it wouldn't typically stir my interest very much either.
It's metal though, so Laibach's "Jesus Christ Superstars" album is just as off the table as the earlier stuff that actually inspired 80% of the Rammstein sound.
If you look at an album title like "Slovenska Morbida" or some of their cover artworks, it's obvious that Noctiferia has always been influenced by Laibach aesthetics. And most important, because probably a huge advantage for this project: they are actually from Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Ultimately the mix on "Reforma" mostly consists of tracks from the heavy, yet electronic albums "WAT" and "Spectre", plus the "Revisted" version of "Smrt Za Smrt" and a rendition of "Nova Akropola", where Noctiferia stray the most from the original, with a completely fresh arrangement including some guest saxophone.
If I could switch some tracks for deeper cuts - like something from "Kapital", maybe? - it would be "Tanz Mit Laibach" (too obvious "hit single"), as well as "Smrt Za Smrt", because that live rendition with orchestra, which is also featured on "Laibach Revisted" as a bonus track, is just one of the darkest, heaviest, mightiest pieces of music ever recorded, so the aforementioned failure is brutal, no matter how good you're doing it.
And Noctiferia actually do a great job on both of those tracks. "Tanz" even has none other than Mayhem / Sunn O))) vocalist Attila Csihar on the microphone, probably the number one pick to impersonate Milan Fras in the whole realm of metal.
Of course there's one more guest vocalist on the album, right in the opener "Now You Will Pay" and it almost feels like a circle closing, because David Vincent has tried incorporating his Laibach influences into Morbid Angel several times - to widely varying degrees of musical success and acceptance among fans.
Personally I'll always be grateful to Morbid Angel not only for their own death metal classics, but also for going on and on about Laibach in the liner notes for "Blessed Are The Sicked" - which in fact led me to listen to that "Kapital" copy which had somehow mystically ended up in the local heavy metal record store...
But back to Noctiferia: When I first listened to "Now You Will Pay" and "No History" I thought that their technique would mainly be to change the tempo and rhythm a bit and just put some typical "metal cover version" guitars and screaming on top of it. But I trusted Laibach, who promoted this release and ordered a signed vinyl copy anyway.
Good on me, because on repeated spins however I'm finding more and more ideas and details in all tracks and so far my enjoyment of this album still keeps increasing.
Maybe there's some obscure advant-garde black metal project out there, which could dive into the more archaic and esoteric aspects of Laibach and create a superior cover work, but if that doesn't happen, I'm absolutely fine with this one, because even though Noctiferia could only fail, they did it with their heads held as high as possible.
Das Spiel ist gewonnen.
Das Spiel ist gewonnen.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen