A Finnish black metal band will not be performing at Denver’s Hi-Dive bar Thursday night, after the band’s alleged Nazi ties surfaced on a metal website last month.
Hi-Dive’s decision to cancel the Horna show comes as venues in cities from Brooklyn to Oakland have elected not to host the band in light of their suspected connection to National Socialist black metal (NSBM), a political philosophy within black metal music that promotes Nazism or similar ideologies. The band denies the Nazi ties.
Horna, Finish for “abyss” or “hell”, was scheduled to play at Hi-Dive at 8 p.m. Thursday. The band’s promoter, Metal DP, said on Facebook that the show will be moved to private property, calling the allegations “ludicrous whack-a-mole accusations.” The Facebook post does not disclose the new location.
A representative for Hi-Dive said via text that he did not want to comment on the decision to cancel the show.
The metal blog MetalSucks.net on March 22 published a story tying two of Horna’s band members to the world of NSBM. Guitarist Ville Iisakki Pystynen, the story said, was once a member of a band which featured songs such as “White Agony.” Some of the band’s lyrics include, “If we don’t change the course, our culture will be dying,” and “Mother Europe, here I stand, a proud son today and a white father tomorrow.”
Pystynen also owned a music label, the blog notes, which worked with bands named Kristallnacht and Hammer — which has a swastika at the center of its band logo.
Another band member, Tuomas Rytkönen, plays keyboard with a different band, Peste Noire, that once put out an album titled “Aryan Supremacy.”
Horna’s show in Houston on Wednesday night caused a stir on social media when members of a small neo-Nazi paramilitary organization called Atomwaffen Division, including its leader, were reportedly seen doing the Nazi salute in the crowd.
Horna, in a Facebook post, denied any ties to Nazism.
“Horna has never been and never will be anything but Satanic Black Metal,” the band wrote. “We judge every man and woman only by their demeanor, not by their race or sexual preferences. We have zero interest in politics, left or right.”
Some people expressed disappointment over Hi-Dive’s decision to cancel the show, with one Twitter user calling the neo-Nazi connections “unsubstantiated” while slamming the venue for threatening Horna’s fans on social media.
The New Yorker magazine, in a February story titled “Heavy Metal Confronts its Nazi Problem,” notes that “because NSBM is a label few bands are eager to embrace, deciding who ought to be categorized that way has often been a matter of debate.”
Certain metal shows and festivals also have had to deal with protests from Antifa, the left-wing antifascist group.
