THEY were young people who got together in South Jakarta to make music, sometime in 1983. Their songs usually revolved around love and youthful themes. Once in a while, they would touch on the environment and social issues affecting society as a whole: bureaucracy, corruption and the irritating behavior of people in power.

Since the release of their first album in 1990, the group that came to be known as Slank—derived from the Indonesian slang