Officials in Belgorod, a town some 400 miles south of Moscow, have written to local café, club and restaurant owners asking them to refuse to host heavy metal concerts.

"I am not familiar with such music myself but we have been asked to head off any satanic activity," a local official, Vladimir Shatilo, told the daily Kommersant newspaper.

"The parents of youngsters who attended such events would never forgive us for (allowing) the performances of people interested in satanic ideology," added another official. He cited recommendations from an infamous Soviet-era psychiatric hospital that said heavy metal music had an "ideologically destructive" effect on young people.

Some local club owners appeared unlikely to comply. One of them, Oleg Proskokov, told the same newspaper that he planned to hold a number of rock events in the near future and that any officials who tried to interfere would get a "punch in the face."

Alexander Naumenko, the lead singer in a local rock group, said the campaign reminded him of the "worst aspects of the Soviet system" when Communist party officials sought to tightly control the kind of music people could listen or dance to in public.

Belgorod has previously introduced fines for public swearing, restricting the number of people on the town's dance floors, and for waging a campaign against Valentine's Day.