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Sepultura’s Egyptian Show Shut Down By Police

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Man, today has proved a shit day for international shows that went down this weekend! There was lightning in Germany, religious zealotry in Georgia, and now police intervention in Egypt, where Ahram Online reports that Sepultura’s show was cancelled by authorities due to incomplete permissions being filed.

Apparently the show was originally set to take place on June 4th at the Nile Country Club in Cairo, but was later moved to a private villa in Sheikh Zayed. But shortly before the show began, local police stormed the villa and demanded to see the organizer’s paperwork. When it wasn’t provided, the police ordered the band and audience to vacate the premises.

The organizer in question? Nader Sadek, the metalhead best known for roping together underground supergroups to play on his admittedly killer albums. Apparently, Sadek didn’t provide Nile Country Club with permissions from the National Security Council. Maybe he assumed that, by putting the concert in a private villa, they wouldn’t have to provide that paperwork, but this appears to be not the case.

That said, there might also have been some cultural bias going down. Hani Shaker, former singer and head of the Egyptian Musician’s Syndicate, has apparently bragged about shutting down “satanic” heavy metal concerts in Egypt of late, and made the following statement regarding the show:

“The devil worshippers were dressed in a very weird style and drew their makeup in the shape of a pentagram…They wore leather jackets with stars on the back and that is strange.”

Ah, I see. Nothing like a good old-fashioned case of “Papers, please”, because heavy metal concerts–especially by non-religious bands like Sepultura–are the problems Egypt needs to solve right now.

Eyewitnesses said that Sadek and the other organizers were arrested at the show, and were taken for interrogation. We hope they’re okay, and that their punishment is as banal as this show was probably going to be.

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