Norwegian black metal band Taake forced to cancel North American tour over neo-Nazi accusations

Norwegian black metal band Taake was forced to cancel its North American tour after being accused of anti-sematic and anti-Islamic views.

The band furiously insisted it had no truck with Nazi ideology but US mainstream media showed footage of singer Hoest onstage with a swastika drawn on his chest during a 2007 show in Germany.

Hoest defended himself last week in a Facebook post that he wore a swastika to do “something extreme for the sake of it,” rather than showing support for the Nazi ideology.  

Depiction of Nazi memorabilia of any kind is banned in Germany.

Taake were supposed to play 19 shows in North America, beginning on March 24 in New York and wrapping up in Vancouver on April 11.

The controversy across America was sparked off last week after hip-hop performer Talib Kweli cancelled his February 21 concert at The Riot Room in Kansas City, protesting the venue also booking Taake.

The collective of anti-fascist groups, Antifa, then pushed for the entire Taake tour to be dropped.

A planned earlier tour in 2017 had been scrapped due to visa issues.

This time around, venues started to pull out, expressing concern for the safety of their patrons.

The opening act, King Dude, removed himself from the tour, telling Brooklyn Vegan, "The banner under which people enter a King Dude concert must be welcoming to all people of all walks of life, race, religion, gender etc.”

Some of the band’s lyrics also seemed to express anti-Islamic sentiments.

The band issued a statement calling the tour cancellation “unfortunate… for America as a whole” because it demonstrates how “left wing agitators are able to force their agenda on the majority.”

They equated the protests with the “McCarthy witch hunts” of the 1950s when people lost their jobs for alleged communist sympathies.

The lengthy statement blamed “the illegal activities of Antifa and its supporters who applied pressure on venues and promoters to cancel shows”, the media, and venues obsessed with safe spaces.

The band said, “We have explained on many, many occasions, the history behind what caused the problems, and there are plenty of articles in the unbiased press and on social media where you can read the truth of it, but just for the sake of clarity Taake is not now, has never been, and never will be a Nazi band.”

As for Talib Kweli, ”His heart may have misguidedly been in the right place, but his brain, and his legal advisors, were not” and were “unfortunate enough to have allowed himself to be played by the lies spread by Antifa.”