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DragonForce guitarist: "I'm not a Nazi!"

Sam Totman, guitarist with this week's Kerrang! cover stars has spoken out against his old band, Demoniac White Power lyrics. The New Zealand-based black metal outfit achieved a certain amount of notoriety in the '90s when a song entitled Hatred Is Purity appeared on their second album, 1996's Stormblade. The song featured lyrics such as 'Aliens invade this place, white man stand up for your race...' and 'So much anger but so much pride, I want to see them all dying', White Power lyrics which sat awkwardly with the tales of bloodthirsty demons, zombies, witches and warriors elsewhere on the album. "Everyone in Demoniac used to write their own songs, and one guy wrote lyrics for about three songs which were kinda White Power Nazi lyrics," Totman told Kerrang! magazine. "It wasn't really serious. We thought singing about Satan and heavy metal was funny and he liked singing about that because that's what he was into at the time. I don't think he's into it now." But when people read those lyrics, they might think it's something you endorsed, given that you stood on a stage beside him. "Yeah maybe. I actually listened to lots of Nazi bands, not so much now, but like, I don't really think that listening to a Nazi band is any different to watching, say, a horror movie: just because you watch a horror movie doesn't mean you wanna go and murder people and just because you listen to a Nazi band doesn't mean that you wanna go and kill black people either. If you listen to Cannibal Corpse it doesn't mean you wanna go and chop up babies either. If it's good music..." You don't think that people might find those kind of lyrics offensive on a different level than, say, an Evil Dead movie? "Well yeah, it's offensive, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to it. We probably sold about 10 copies of that record, I don't think I'm gonna be on Ophrah's show trying to say 'Oh sorry, I'm not a Nazi really'."

Published: 2008-09-12
Provider: Kerrang!