One often only realizes this in retrospect only: wars usually do not break out, but announce themselves long before – or are talked into it for years.  The wars that accompanied the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia also belong to this type of violent conflict.

Among the harbingers of this event were also record covers.

Bijelo Dugme (The White Button), the commercial mega-band of Yugoslavia, which in the 1970s still lured buyers with cover pictures, which are probably considered sexist today, suddenly illustrated their LPs with armed uniforms and a battle scene.

And Plavi Orkestar (The Blue Orchestra), a teen pop group that had previously drawn attention to itself on the LP with a tribute to the Sergeant Pepper album of the Beatles, now put a war-ravaged old woman, framed by a Soviet flag, portraits of Hitler and Mussolini and the picture of an execution, on the packaging of an album called „Death to Fascism“.

The singer Dino Merlin had Cola cans carry out proxy wars on the cover of his first album Kokuzna Vremena (Pathetic/Modest Times) and the band Galija had military trucks drive through the pampas on the album Korak do slobode (A Step to Freedom).

When you look at the old record covers today, you wonder if you could have known earlier where it would end.

But you also wonder if these records might have been part of a gigantic collective self-fulfilling prophecy.