Watain’s show in Singapore this past March was canceled by the country’s Ministry of Home Affairs at least in part, it would seem, thanks to a Change.org petition that called for a ban of “Satanic music groups.” While Watain’s connections to violent and hateful imagery are at the very least based in reality, Soilwork, who do not traffic in such themes at all, were also swept up in the crossfire and subsequently took the initiative of moving their show from March to October.

Now Rachel Chan, the organizer of the Change.org effort, has set her sights on upcoming shows by Pestilence and Cryptospy (as well as the rescheduled Soilwork date) as the number of signatures on the petition nears 25,000. In an update posted on Change.org, Chan shared the following:

“According to Wikipedia, death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. The lyrical themes of death metal may invoke slasher film-stylized violence, religion (sometimes Satanism), occultism, Lovecraftian horror, etc. “Black metal (initially a synonym for ‘Satanic metal’) has often sparked controversy due to the actions and ideologies associated with the genre. Many artists express extreme anti-Christian and misanthropic views, advocating various forms of Satanism of ethnic paganism. In the 1990s, members of the scene were responsible for the spate of church burnings and murders.”

While Pestilence certainly have a questionable past, Chan is targeting them for the wrong reasons — along with Cryptopsy — by making blanket assumptions about an entire genre without any understanding of the specifics. Singaporean metalheads are understandably quite upset, but one look at the comments on the petition shows that the other side is equally as passionate, with signers expressing such sentiments as “keep our kids and future generation safe please.”

How does one combat such a supreme level of ignorance? I don’t know that it can be done. Hopefully the Singaporean authorities come to their senses and realize that these shows pose no threat to their youth whatsoever, but I certainly won’t be surprised in the slightest if these shows all get pulled down, too.

[via The PRP]