Laibach

Military smoke bombs instead of dry ice once forced part of a Belgrade audience out through the venue's windows. Such was early Laibach: home-built electronics, gramophones and radios, heavy rhythms and roaring vocals, all wrapped in parodied totalitarian imagery that got the group banned from using its own name in Yugoslavia.

By the mid-1980s the sound had grown richly layered, threading pop and classical samples beneath Milan Fras's deep bass voice in Slovene, German and English. Covers were a speciality, with light melodies recast as sinister gothic tunes.

Lyrics shifted from war towards whatever political issue felt most charged, always deliberately ambiguous. Formerly censored as dissidents, the musical wing of the Neue Slowenische Kunst collective was promoted to national cultural icon after Slovenia won independence in 1991.