Laibach was formed in the mining town of Trbovlje in 1980, then part of Yugoslavia. The name is the German name for Ljubljana, a pointed reference to the Nazi occupation of Slovenia. Their first concert in Trbovlje drew the attention of the Socialist Youth, and bans and censorship followed through the socialist years, which handed the group a kind of dissident standing and then an international audience.
In 1984 Laibach initiated the founding of Neue Slowenische Kunst together with the painters of Irwin and the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre. Their use of totalitarian, national and military iconography has been the constant of the work since the beginning, and the music holds a line between industrial, martial and neo-classical.
