Marduk’s performance in Oakland last month was canceled “in the interest of public safety” when Antifa groups allegedly threatened to show up and cause havoc in protest of the band’s use of nazi imagery in their lyrics. The Oakland Metro Operahouse — the venue at which the show was scheduled to take place — and the Oakland Police Department collectively decided to cancel the show despite having “read interview after interview with Marduk spanning over the last 20 years and found no statements indicating the band are white supremacists, nationalists, or anti-immigrant,” citing concerns for the venue security and police department. This obviously caused quite an uproar in the metal community, as Marduk have been plagued by white supremacy allegations throughout their career despite no evidence to support those claims.

Now the band’s guitarist Morgan Steinmeyer Håkansson has commented on the incident in an interview with Metal Wani:

“The whole thing about that, I think, was really blown out of proportion. It’s actually a handful of kids who decide they wanna judge what people should listen to or see. It’s the way they work there — not satisfied with anything in their lives, so they demonstrate and cause problems for other people. So I think it was really blown out of proportion. But the police decided to cancel it because of security reasons. Otherwise, the show would have happened, because the promoters wanted to do it, we wanted to do it. So it was just really blown out of proportion and giving air to those kind of people, so it was a bit retarded. But we’ll be back over there. We’re going back already in August/September. “The world is really filled with retards, so shit will always happen. Every circus has its clown, so… whatever. Shit happens. I’m not gonna focus that much about it. We’ll get over it like we have done with a lot of problems in the past. So it’s no big deal.”

Håkansson has a more or less zen attitude about the whole thing, although his use of the word “retarded” certainly isn’t going to do anything to help sway those who believes they’re less-than-couth characters.

In any case, good news that the show has been rescheduled; something to look forward to for Marduk fans both in Oakland and, presumably, the rest of the U.S.

[via Blabbermouth]