Szene Wien cancels concert linked to neo-Nazis

A neo-Nazi gig has been cancelled after club bosses found out the orientation of the groups’ music.Szene Wien music club chief Josef “Muff” Sopper said he had booked four bands for the Black Metal concert on 29 March through a foreign organiser but backtracked when he found out who he had lined up. He said: “It cannot be that Szene Wien is identified with rumours of neo-Nazi links. Szene Wien distances itself from all fascist, racist and Nazi orientations.”Marco Schreuder, a Vienna Green councillor, said one of the bands due to have appeared had released albums entitled “Final Solution, Holocaust and Aryan Blood” and members had said in interviews that “National Socialism would function very well on an ideal level.”He added that members of another booked band had performed at a concert in Germany with swastikas painted on their chests and that yet another had opened an online platform called “Total Holocaust Records.”Schreuder asked how such a thing could have happened, claiming that Szene Wien as the recipient of significant city subsidies had an obligation to vet its events well in advance of them taking place.Vienna Green Martina Wurzer charged that the Black Metal bands that were to have performed functioned as links between neo-Nazi groups and the youth sub-culture and played a key role in building a neo-Nazi network in Europe.She added that such bands should not be given venues in Vienna.