ARKONA: St. Petersburg Concert Shut Down By Police - Feb. 10, 2009

Moscow, Russia-based "Slavic pagan metal" band ARKONA had its February 6, 2009 concert in St. Petersburg shut down after 30 minutes by the Russian special-tasks police unit/riot police (OMON). One of the policemen came up on stage and announced, "The concert is over; everybody against the wall!" All the fans and musicians were then individually searched their ID information was collected. The police then took fingerprints and had photos taken of each person who was at the club that night.

The band has since issued the following statement on the matter:

"We deeply regret to announce that our performance at Arctic club was stopped by law-enforcement authorities of St. Petersburg. We would like to point out that this wasn't the first incident of canceling rock (or nonconformist subculture) gigs in this city, and it's not connected with ARKONA's creative work. It emerged that it was police plan operation in the field of fighting with some parts of nonconformist subculture in St. Petersburg which harmed all our fans and the band. The operation took place not only in Arctica club, but also in other rock clubs of the city.

"ARKONA has stated many times in the past and will do it again: we do not support any political trend and revile against any from of extremism. Our art is associated only with history, tradition and native religious believes of Russian people. ARKONA is not responsible for behavior or any actions done by some individuals which, probably, lead to the shutting down of the performance.
"We invite all our fans who were at the gig to our Moscow presentation. If you have the opportunity to visit Moscow on 11th of February, you may visit our show at Tochka club using the old (i.e. Arctic's) ticket. We warranty that such an incident won't happen again! Please contact us using pagan_arkona@mail.ru e-mail. We'll meet with you and change your old ticket to the new one. And we would like to thank all of you for the great support you showed under shocking circumstances at Arctica club."