IMPALED NAZARENE Frontman: 'Basic Rights Are Completely Destroyed In Germany'

IMPALED NAZARENE frontman Mika Luttinen has revealed to the UK's Zero Tolerance magazine that the past 12 months have been among the toughest of the Finns' career to date. Following a knee-jerk reaction to the band's perceived political stance, IMPALED NAZARENE have found themselves banned from playing in several European countries, and their 2000 album "Nihil" has even been removed from sale in Germany.

"I was kind of thinking that these things will fade away," Luttinen says, "but it seems that I was completely wrong. I just don't understand how it's possible that some left-wing punks can have such influence and such power, that they can actually cancel whole tours. I mean, they just say that this artist is right-wing and everybody will say, 'Yeah yeah, that's true, let's ban them.' One of the foundations of the European Union is that you're supposed to have freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The basic rights in the last three or four years are completely destroyed in Germany, completely destroyed in Poland, because in Poland there's an extreme Catholic government and this government attacked us. If the EU is supposed to have these basic rights, how is it possible that the individual governments can then abuse them? It makes no sense to me, this is supposed to be a 'united Europe,' so how can all these countries come to completely different decisions? I can still somehow understand the German paranoia about the far right, with their past. But now we are talking about fucking music."

The new issue of Zero Tolerance magazine, featuring GALLHAMMER on the cover, goes on sale on November 15.