Church must become more open-minded, says metal musician

A heavy metal band whose show at York Minster has been called an "outright insult" to Christianity has said the church is "sleepwalking" into oblivion unless it becomes more open-minded.

- Josh Halliday

The English rockers, Plague of Angels, provoked a backlash last month from parishioners who described the concert in April as "shocking and deeply inappropriate" and threatened to protest outside the 800-year-old cathedral.

Churchgoers were outraged that two of the band's members were previously part of an extreme-metal group that sold a T-shirt featuring a topless nun masturbating and the words "Jesus is a cunt".

One worshipper described the slogan as "possibly the most disgustingly blasphemous anti-Christian sentiment I have ever seen".

But now Mark Mynett, the Plague of Angels founder, has distanced his band from the offensive merchandise, which Rolling Stone magazine described as "the most controversial shirt in rock history".

He said his bandmates were only ever session musicians with Cradle of Filth, the group behind the T-shirt, and had always "hated" the top.