loudest band you've ever seen

There are several candidates, but only one show has actually produced obvious, permanent hearing loss, and that was Mastodon earlier this year. My right ear has never fully recovered. Granted, this was probably a straw-camel's back situation, because I've seen tons of loud shows and never been good about wearing earplugs. And the thing is, Mastodon seemed REALLY LOUD during the show, but not painfully the way some other shows have. I think it was just the sustained level of it, it was a long show and it was pretty much never not REALLY LOUD.

In retrospect, me suddenly deciding to start going to metal shows in my mid-30s was probably not a good call. Several AMT gigs in small spaces, Wolves in the Thrown Room, Liturgy, Ludicra, Mastodon... sort of asking for trouble right at the age when cumulative hearing loss tends to catch up. Should've gotten into chamber music instead.

2nd the early 90s dino jr (haven't seen j & the fog). a lot of rock-oriented ex-indie bands did this with the major label money during those years. like they'd been trying all along to be as big & loud as possible, then went overboard when it became possible.

haven't seen a REALLY loud show in quite a while. probably because the bands i go see are typically poverty-stricken and playing in tiny places for like five bucks. or else i'm less drawn to the earthcrushing stuff. wooden shjips & AFCGT were pretty impressive last winter, though.

and AMT shit yeah. have had cotton casino shaped holes drilled into my brain by that band.

Swans on the Children Of God tour. I saw them at Newcastle Riverside, and as I've said elsewhere, every snare hit was like a cannon going off right beside your ear; plus you had enough time to anticipate/dread each one. Deeply, desperately unpleasant.

Mogwai at Glasgow Barrowlands (1999?) were stupendously loud. Driving back to Newcastle, I was back in England before my ears popped - prior to that it had been like being in a plane when the pressure means you can't hear anything.

MBV, on the Rollercoaster tour, were loud, but at the time it also felt kind of dumb. The venue (an ice rink) had shit acoustics and it was pointless to as loud as they were. hen they did You Made Me Realise, and hit that frequency for ten minutes or whatever, I looked at across at the St.Johns Ambulance men who were there (wearing building site ear defenders) and they had looks on their faces of "you kids are idiots for putting up with this". I agreed with them.

These days I wear plugs if I think it's going to go past a certain level (the Mogwai gig mentioned above scared the shit out of me) and so it's hard to guage just how loud bands have been recently, but even so (and just to go full circle), there was no mistaking the volume that Swans played at when I saw them at Leeds this year; each bass drum hit was like a shove in the chest.

swans gig in boston was v v loud but not painful

when The Body played at my store in october i honestly couldn't believe how loud they were. i tried to go up close, but the evil wind coming from their amps pushed me back. they were set up to play in, like, a medium-sized hall. in my basement.

― scott seward, Monday, December 6, 2010 1:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

what's funny is that until very recently they didn't play many medium-sized halls, they've been playing small places like as220 and chip's always been crazy with the volume. they fit in the fine pvd tradition of punishing-volume bands. there's one local doom metal band who aren't all that good, so I'm not calling them out by name, but they made the walls shake at machines w/ magnets when I saw them.

this white mice show in austin was memorably loud

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/IMG00544-20100319-1706.jpg

at least until the cops showed

bands being macho about loudness is the dumbest thing

unless the music is acoustic, like a brass band, and the loudness comes from lungs and muscles and technique, not from deaf sound guys.

Dinosaur Jr/MBV double bill was the loudest show I've ever seen, but the most punishing show was A Tribe Called Quest on the Midnight Marauders tour. The bass was so heavy it was making me nauseous. There were people throwing up in trash cans. The venue asked them to turn it down and they called the audience pussies and didn't change a thing. We ended up leaving before the encore; the few minutes of quiet made things start settling back down and I was afraid more bass would cause me to lose it.

Quietest was undoubtedly Belle and Sebastian, Manchester Town Hall 1997(?), where they were barely audible at all. A tape is in circulation (recorded by me) that I used to see getting quality ratings of C- on tape-trading sites, and I'd get all defensive "it wasn't me, it was the fucking band!"

seeing Low open for Swans once was kind of the ultimate in extremes.

I've seen Sunn O)))) since my post upthread, and was surprised that they weren't the new loudness standard. But that Jesus Lizard show would be hard to beat.

I listened to Sunn O with earplugs for a few minutes, but ditched them and only had muffled hearing for an hour or so after the show. The thorax-rattling bass frequencies were more impressive than the volume.

only time i've ever thought i'd damaged my hearing at a gig was listening, w/out earplugs, to maryanne amacher perform at the arches in glasgow. it wasn't just loud, it was the high rippling frequences she used, literally ear-piercing. my ears were singing/ringing for days afterwards, until my hearing subsided back to the 'normal' low-level hiss and whistle.

Lightning Bolt for me. Painful, just painful. Plus I got my glasses/nose broken as well.

^^^
Normal low level hiss and whistle.

Sadly otm.

Lightning Bolt for me. Painful, just painful. Plus I got my glasses/nose broken as well.

― Darren Huckerby (Dwight Yorke), Monday, December 6, 2010 1:12 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yow, sounds horrible. i don't think i've ever been more entertained by a band than lightning bolt, and though they're always loud, i've never suffered for it.

I loved it though. My own fault for being literally wedged between the two Brians!

A Sunny Day in Glasgow - I put my hands over my ears a couple times even with earplugs. Then again I was standing about 2 feet away from the speakers.

I mean, A Place to Bury Strangers. JUST a tad bit different.

The Killers

It was awful

Either the mighty 3d's or Public Enemy. Could still feel these gigs ringing in my ears the next day.

no way to know, but Sunn O)))), Khanate and My Bloody Valentine come to mind.

Six By Seven were colossal

The volume of GZA's vocals was the most painful, I think. Also - Compulsion around, er 1992/3? Anyone remember them? Haswell & Hecker also hurt.

The obvious: Swans, MBV, Whitehouse. I've seen Mogwai countless times and they've never really seemed that loud to me. Odd.

Iggy in a smallish club in San Diego in '84(?). I have tinnitus.

MBV at Liberty Lunch in the '90s was JUST RIGHT.

Black Dice at ATP NY in '09 was stupidly loud. You could see dust from the rafters coming down. In fact just about anyone who's played at ATP NY is crazily loud. Anyone not using earplugs there is going to have serious hearing problems later in life.

Probably Pantera.

there's clearly massive variants btw bands who like it loud, and a crap sound system/ engineers who make it that way by accident. i mean i didn't find MBV loud at all really in a painful sense on the 08 tour although technically it was loud *per se* but i found Suede at their recent Manchester reformation show painfully, unbearably shrill and grating at a couple of points despite loving the gig.
can't believe people were *throwing up* at a Tribe Called Quest show! surely you could sue afterwards.

Godspeed you black emperor in 2000: efrim retrieves a roll of toilet paper backstage and proceeds to distribute portions to the front row (many of whom were covering their ears die to his high pitched loud-ass-hell screwdriver-as-guitar-bow magic)

out of curiosity, what would the effect be on one's hearing be from touring as a member of say mbv? i can't imagine the level of tinnitus that a musician in a band like that must have.

[remarks about bands trying to be "da loudest", as being macho/stupid/irresponsible]

i can remember being utterly disappointed by the low dB level at a prodigy gig.
hoped they would turn on a second set of pa's when they play poison.

xp bob mould got such severe tinnitus that he would fall asleep with tv snow on full blast to drown out the ringing in his ears. I heard one of the dudes in mission of Burma had it so bad he wore firing range earmuffs (or whatever they're called) on stage at some point during their reformation.

Oh yeah, I forgot about seeing Bob Mould's "Black Sheets of Rain" tour, my ears felt water logged four a good four days after.

Same with the Scorpions, "Love at First Sting" tour.

Old.

Yellow Swans were amazingly loud the last time i saw them in 05.

when i saw Angel Blood a couple of years ago, i was sure my hearing was gone forever. those cats knew how to WAIIIIILLLL

I heard one of the dudes in mission of Burma had it so bad he wore firing range earmuffs (or whatever they're called) on stage at some point during their reformation.

Roger Miller wore those for years, surely since the band first broke up. He was just wearing earplugs on their most recent tour, though with a plexiglass screen in front of the drum kit to protect him from the bombast, presumably.

I also saw Envy at that ATP in 2008, though I don't remember them being as loud as that - of course, I was wearing earplugs.

roger both plexiglass and earmuffs when i saw them in 2004. they initially stopped playing because of his hearing problems, right?

stage volume is very different than the volume out front (hopefully it's lower, but sometimes it's worse if the monitors are blasting). either way, gotta wear those plugs.

Lightning Bolt - you pair of absolute bastards. I thought it was just me, but there seems to be plenty of mention up thread too.

I had tinnitus for 5 days and thought it was permanent damage initially.

Honourable mention to the Dutch band, Gore - surely one of the first math- rock=== instrumental bands ever. They stick in my mind as being extremely loud as do Swans, who I saw around the same time. I was a very impressionable young idiot.

the most pain caused has been by, of all bands, Fleet Foxes at the Roundhouse

don't worry -- this applies to many of us without hearing damage as well

Black Dice at ATP NY in '09 was stupidly loud. You could see dust from the rafters coming down.

agree w/ this, it was NUTS ^^

other stuff: mogwai circa 2003 a couple times (they've gotten quieter in recent years; or else my hearing's just a bit worse?), MBV at ATP NY 08, then the following year in ATX; dinosaur jr.; a place to bury strangers

all shows where i felt like i could swim through the soundwaves in the air, they were so thick and palpable

out of curiousity, does anyone actually like it that loud?

I don't - find it very annoying. Never been prepared to give MBV a proper go for that very reason (ilx heresy I know). their show at Primavera ('09 I think?) was astonishingly loud for an outdoor event. There were a lot of extremely loud acts that weekend actually - I'm pretty sure the sound engineers couldn't resist using all that extra volume that I'm sure MBV demanded.

MGMT in the academy in Dublin was also v v loud - think there was a lot of over-compressed backing track...

Actually. Kraftwerk at the Festival Hall was staggeringly loud - we were sitting in the 2nd row, and you could hear your whole body shake. Person I was with had to go and stand at the back of the hall. But there was no ear-ring the next morning - maybe because the sound was so clean and spacious, with no wall of noise.

Feel you whole body shake, obv. Not hear.

really??? i was there too - admittedly nearer the back - and it was one of the v quiestest gigs i've ever been to. def cld've been a LOT louder.

sometimes i DO like it insanely loud - the adrenaline rush that a wall of noise generates is prob the closest i'll ever come to the thrill of an extreme sport - but obv it depends on the group and what they do - drone needs to overwhelm you, invade yr body, but don't see the point of yr standard indie rock group being face-meltingly loud

Oh yeah, upfront it was staggering. I don't think they were playing through a PA though, were they? They had these two suitcase-sized speakers - presumably of their own construction - at the sides of the stage and that seemed to be it. We were 15 feet from one of those. If it had been any louder I'd have gone home.

Cheap Trick, Pearl Jam and Black Crowes, all at different times in the Fox Theater in Atlanta, of all places. Strange that it would be so loud in that place but all three, you saw the drummers hammering away but you couldn't hear any of them, no sense of tempo at all. Unpleasant.

Was going to see Husker Du at Liberty Lunch back in the mid-'80s and a friend told me since they were so painfully loud he'd get us up on stage to stand behind the guy who was mixing monitors; maybe we'd get a little less volume. Didn't help--it was just ridiculous.