In a purported bid to deliverВ historical justice, legislation passedВ in April 2016 banned the вЂpropaganda of communism or any other totalitarian systemвЂ™ on buildings, architectural objects, organizations, events, individuals or dates. This state of affairs has invited what Polish artist Artur Zmijewski described in his recent diagnosis of the current political situation inВ Poland, вЂA Confession of LoveвЂ™ (2016), as a вЂleap into hard identificationвЂ™. The everyday language of power вЂ“ militant, patriarchal and resentful вЂ“ has translated into policies of symbolic violence that replace plurality with a homogenous reading of the past. But the underpinning narrative, rooted in historical instances of martyrdom, sacrifice and exclusion, largely unfolds in the symbolic sphere of culture and memory.

The most immediate consequence has been a politicization and, effectively, a subjugation of the state media, military and judiciary. Necropolo should be viewed against the broader context of PolandвЂ™s current political and social backdrop, where the democratic state apparatus has been progressively dismantled since the double victory of the right-wing Law and Justice party in 2015вЂ™s presidential and parliamentary elections. Reaching its heyday in the mid-1990s, the genre combined the foreign-sounding вЂdiscoвЂ™ with вЂpoloвЂ™ вЂ“ aВ word widely affixed to Polish products and enterprises to add a whiff of exoticism: hence Polo Cockta, an ersatz of Coca-Cola. With its roots in dance music, disco polo embodied the spirit of the times: light-hearted, ribald lyrics about love found or lost, or carefree holidays, typically backed by electronic keyboard or guitar. These changes resulted in some Poles transitioning from rags to riches overnight, whether through entrepreneurialism, aВ canny knowledge of legal loopholes or both. Necropolo is a spin off of вЂdisco poloвЂ™, a musical style that developed in Poland in the late 1980s, just as hurried political reforms had ushered in aВ mood of happy-go-lucky consumerism and economic individualism. The bandвЂ™s founders, Adam Witkowski and Maciej Salamon, shun any punk identification, preferring the self-coined вЂnecropoloвЂ™, whose hallmarks are macabre themes, a healthy dose of profanity and deadpan humour. вЂI got this thought looped in my head / it keeps me tethered to the earth / somehow I got so used to how things are / that I missed out on my own demise itвЂ™s all so boring and far from droll / so I compose my necropolo.вЂ™ Crooned in Polish to torpid guitar riffs and a droning bass clarinet, the opening lyrics to вЂNekropolo 2017вЂ™ (2017) by Nagrobki (The Tombstones) are both confessional and programmatic.

Darkness album cover