Watain have issued a statement denying allegations of Nazism after their live guitarist Set “Davide Totaro” Teitan was seen doing what looked awfully similar to the Sieg Heil/Nazi salute. The gesture was made while the band were taking to the stage during the band’s recent live show at the Kraken in Stockholm, Sweden this past weekend. Footage of that can be seen below, here’s their statement:

“It has come to our attention that people have misinterpreted an arm movement of Set at our Kraken show as a “nazi salute”. Fucking hell, come on folks! As everyone should know by now, Watain band members have no ties to nazi ideology neither publically nor personally, and with this statement we want to put an end to further uneccesary speculation in this tiresome subject.

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What we give praise to in our songs and in their lyrics could very well be seen as the very anti-thesis to some utopian right wing ideology of the past. “Saluting” one of our many enemies on the sacred ground that is our stage would not make much sense. That is something we are sure our fans and supporters -who we are proud to say are from every possible “race”, gender, nation and cultural background- can testify to.

As would the fact that our line-up and working crew are also of a widely diverse ethnical background. And the list goes ever on, eliminating all possible forms of soiling by political or ideological agendas, allowing the Devil’s fire to burn clear and untainted in the sanctuary that we have created for ourselves.

It is of course highly regrettable that these unwelcome, inconvenient and misplaced accusations are even allowed to arise and we hope we can now put this behind us and focus on the many important tasks at hand.

Thank you for understanding.

Now let us fearlessly and doubtlessly move forward into the raging chaos of metallic deathnoise madness that is Trident Wolf Eclipse.

FTW!”