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. After clear images surfacing the internet of Watain’s Guitarist , David Totaro, doing what looked very similar to the Sieg Heil salute, nonetheless Watain issued a statement denying all allegations of Nazism. The gesture was made while the band were taking to the stage during their recent live Sweden shows at the Kraken, Stockholm, this pasted weekend.
“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.”
While accusations are being made toward the self claimed Spirtual Santanist band, it must be noted that the Nazi salute is usually executed with the right hand, and what footage has capture is the guitarist saluting with his left hand, which arguably dissolves the claim of their ties to nazi ideology. Nonetheless, for their part, Watain have always considered themselves Satanists, but despises the idea of this correlating to anything bad, especially Nazism, claiming that ,“Satanism is the religion of the accuser and the enemy of the world and you can’t expect people who are content with the world to relate to that or accept it.” However, arguably regardless of what hand the salute was done with, surely the salute still represent the same thing, regardless of religious views or concept, a Nazi salute remains a Nazi salute whether executed with the right or left hand. Well, this is not the case according to Watain as they state:
“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.”
In addition, with such an ethnically diverse team surely, the idea of intentionally doing such an offensive salute would be both irrational and illogical;
“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.”
Regardless of the intent behind the gesture, after these treacherous allegations, arguably we can now rely on the bands commit to be more sensitive to how the address or “salute” their fans. And while the intent behind the gesture will remain questionable Watain’s decision to move forward and give the fans more metallic deathnoise, is what will, arguably continue their success.
