Laibach Share New Interpretation of 'Strange Fruit'

Laibach have announced details of “Strange Fruit”, a three-track single release that follows their recent single “The Future” (Leonard Cohen). This unique interpretation of the haunting protest song has been featured in their ongoing Opus Dei tour (which continues into 2025, full dates are listed below), and precedes the band’s Opus Dei Revisited double album (out December 13, 2024 on Mute).

Billie Holiday recorded her iconic version of “Strange Fruit” on April 20, 1939. The track, originally written by 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 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.”

Laibach's interpretation of this famous protest song is aimed at this new context of eternal but ever-changing and adaptive racism. 

“Strange Fruit” follows May’s remastered edition of Laibach’s classic meditation on freedom and fascism, Opus Dei. Their 12-month salute to their 1987 album continues in December with the release of Opus Dei Revisited, which features two radical new interpretations of the album, one by Laibach, and the other by original producer Rico Conning. Opus Dei Revisited is out via Mute on 2LP / 2CD and digitally on December 13, 2024. Pre-order the album HERE.

LAIBACH – OPUS DEI TOUR:

2025:
2/7/2025 - Ljubljana, Kino Šiška, SI

2/16/2025 - Krakow, Kwadrat, PL
2/18/2025- Ostrava, Barrak, CZ
2/19/2025 - Vienna, Arena, AT
2/20/2025 - Jena, F-Haus, DE
2/21/2025 - Sittard, Poppodium Volt, NL
2/22/2025 - London, Islington Assembly Hall, UK
2/23/2025 - Manchester, Ritz, UK
2/24/2025 - Southampton, The 1865, UK
2/25/2025 - Bristol, Trinity Centre, UK
2/27/2025 - Lausanne, Les Docks, CH
2/28/2025 – Bologna, Link, IT
3/1/2025 - Nova Gorica, SNG Nova Gorica, SI
3/4/2025 - Skopje, Macedonian Philharmonic, MK
3/5/2025 - Athens, Gazarte, GR
3/6/2025 - Sofia, Pirotska 5, BG
3/7/2025 - Bucharest, Quantic Club, RO 
3/8/2025 - Beograd, Dom Omladine, RS
3/21/2025 -  Maribor, Narodni dom, SI 

Photo courtesy of Laibach