Another Hate Band Has a Hard Time Keeping Venues in the US

The band Horna should just go the hell back home.

A Finnish metal band that has been associated with the National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) scene is seeing a number of venues booked for their North American tour canceling their appearances, but some gigs still remain, including one promoted by a band that saw controversy in October after performing at a New Jersey venue that originally said they were canceled for similar reasons.

After music fans began sounding the alarm on them, an article on the Metal Sucks website focused on Horna, a band whose former and current members have either performed in NSBM bands or have ran labels that distribute NSBM music. Almost immediately, the band lost venues in Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, Houston, Austin, Texas and Brooklyn, although Metal Mafia Records, the promoters in Brooklyn, as well as the promoter in Los Angeles said their venues were simply moved after being kicked out of the original ones. The Denver venue Hi-Dive has said they will never work with the promoter again.

Horna was also scheduled to play at the same venue with All that Remains and Escape the Fate in Mesa, Arizona, on Friday, but in another hall nearby. Regardless, they also lost this show and their gig was reportedly moved to the Starlite Lounge in Glendale with All that Remains frontman Phil Labonte condemning the band in a tweet.

Management just sent this. I believe in free speech, I also believe in freedom of association and we don’t associate with those types of beliefs. pic.twitter.com/QYv8lXUKSR

— PhilThatRemains (@philthatremains) March 23, 2019

Horna still has some venues allowing them to play.  Some on Twitter are alerting to a Horna show tonight at the Bricks Restaurant & Sports Bar in Maywood, CA, a venue that was concealed from the public by the promoters by using a longtime tactic employed by neo-Nazis in the past when they wanted to hold events: Direct ticketholders to a “meeting place” where they will be told where the actual venue is. Another Horna show is scheduled for April 10 at the Jabber Jaws Bar & Grille in Allentown, PA, and they will be playing with the band Azanigin, who will also be performing with them at a show on April 9 at the Chop Shop Pub & Grub in Seabrook, NH. Azanigin band member Eduardo MacLeod runs Metal Mafia Records, the promoters of the Brooklyn show.

The Seabrook show is being promoted by the band NortherN, who most recently was in the news for being removed from a show in Clifton, NJ, along with two other bands for their own history of neo-Nazi and racist leanings, only to play the show despite announcements from the club that they were not going to play.

Formerly known as Cold Northern Vengeance, member Paul “Heathen” Hamblett, a onetime Seabrook resident, was once arrested and charged with assault and battery after attacking a Black man he accused of being anti-white after he called him a “bitch ass white boy”, according to some online discussion.

Horna has denied in a Facebook statement that they are a racist band, a pronouncement that earned a rebuke from a pro-NSBM website that said, “(M)etal as a whole would benefit from avoiding these types of apologies and instead tackling the problem head on: we do not agree with mainstream society, its trends, its conformist harmlessness and sociable acceptance, its notion of a world of love and trust, or the Establishment regime which exists to enforce egalitarian ideas on us all. We disagree and we hate you and want you dead.”