loudest band you've ever seen

Otherwise, probably standing in front of Luke's Jazz Chorus at a Rapture show. Dude sure does like the "bright" switch.

I WAS AT THIS SHOW. Lupos in downtown Providence, November 2001, I believe. Great show!

after a while my ears must have got used to it and the gig was one of the best and most powerful things i have ever witnessed with gira rolling about the stage almost completely naked. in hindsight, it was really stupidly loud. probably illegally loud but at the time i loved it.

i went to see them in glasgow the next night but it was cancelled as the venue there refused point blank to let them bring the pa into the building.

the next loudest thing was jeff mills also at the edinburgh venue circa 1997 when he played at a club night i did there. he had had some of his tracks cut onto metal acetates (which he would play and then throw onto the ground - i guess they were pretty indestructable). the process of having them cut onto metal (something i have never seen before or since) meant that they were about twice the volume of normal vinyl. the club was notoriously loud to begin with but this was just insane. i was standing behind him and smelled burning and looked round and saw that he had literally caused one of the monitors to go on fire. as was mentioned in one of the whitehouse posts above, the air took on a weird texture. for the whole night i had been unable to find my friend sam. she had been up for a couple of nights so i figured she must have gone to sleep in her car. at the end of jeff mills' set, she emerged from beneath a pile of coats under the dj riser. she had slept through the whole thing!

The most OTM thing on this thread.

Most unexpectedly loud band? Cocteau Twins. The shows around 84/85 were very, very loud indeed and considering some of the venues they were in it's hard to see how they got away with it.

I also once played a gig with a band in Iowa called Scorched Earth Policy whose guitarist was plugged into a speaker bigger than the club's mains. During soundcheck the mix guy confidentially showed me that the power on the board was completely off and it was still completely deafening. God Bless you, Scorched Earth Policy!

Motörhead on their 'The Wörld is yours' tour, ~50 meters from stage.
(pic shows deciBel for android)
http://s7.directupload.net/images/101206/temp/57ig5czy.jpg

Sunn 0))) in 2005 in manchester for sheer brain busting volume in a 100 cap venue. Every time a pint was put down it shimmyed off the table onto the floor. Gigs/clubs are so so anal about volume levels in london now it was amazing to be blown away in berlin recently at mikz and berghain

BORIS

neds atomic dustbin 94

Yeah, I think Motorhead is probably the loudest band I've seen.
They brought their own monitor set up and it was bigger than the house PA.
And it was at the biggest club in town. They were great and really loved their reception from the locals.

MBV at Ricky's in Leeds in spring 88. A tiny nightclub with its speakers in all four corners of the room. So loud it was hard to tell which was up or down. It was actually quite frightening. Got the hearing in my left ear permanently damaged by Airbourne at the Borderline a couple of years back, but I think that would have been fine if I'd been able to get a bit further away from the speakers. Since then, my left ear starts hurting if things are getting too loud, and the most pain caused has been by, of all bands, Fleet Foxes at the Roundhouse. Had to stick finger in ear, so it looked as if I was harmonising.

Boris were ridiculous when I saw them. I'm not really a fan of metal; I just saw them because the show was cheap and I was in Milwaukee that day. When they handed out earplugs at the door, I knew about what to expect. Whenever you took the earplugs out you would just get overwhelmed by noise. It was just physically painful to be without them.

Most shows I've seen in general have been too loud. Maybe my ears are just weak but every time I go without earplugs I find it hard to really have a good time. Plus knowing that your ears will ring for a couple of days after plus you might get permanent hearing loss is kind of a turn off. I wonder why they don't just turn it down a notch. The only two shows I saw that were not too loud were Kraftwerk and Sufjan Stevens (yeah, I know). I dig trying to drown out conversation but why make it physically painful?? (/cry)

MBV
Boredoms
Dino Jr

Swans (duh)

i don't remember them being ~quite~ as loud as Boris, but i saw lightning bolt at the same venue and my buddy had significant tinnitus for over a WEEK afterwards.

sunn O))) and oval

MBV was pretty loud even in a big venue.

my hearing was numb for a good 5 days after seeing lightning bolt

i saw a band called diet pills in a show my friend put on in my town and that was pretty face melting. none of the amplifiers were mic'ed either. http://www.last.fm/music/diet+pills/_/Sun

seen a few of the famously loud bands, but they all paled in comparison to, oddly, wire, which felt like a literal beating to the eardrums. also oddly, flaming lips c. 2003? gave me my scariest incident, as for a couple of days afterwards the hearing in my right ear was pitched up.

black keys were also very loud

Motorhead, hands down. I could feel my ear drum flapping in like a piece of wax paper in my skull. Actually left early because I could not take it, which was my official entry into middle age.

Envy @ ATP a couple of years back. I was bellowing inanely for days after that, with no concept of what actual sounds sounded like any more. Battles were on in the venue next door and had to turn their sound up to be heard, which just encouraged Envy to get even fucking louder.

Flaming Lips were known for playing v loud live back in the day, but I suppose it was odd they were that loud in 2003, long after their "makeover".

why make it physically painful?? (/cry)

Four years and 150-some posts before somebody asked this!

mogwai was one of the 1st answers way upthread, and yeah, when i saw them in 2000, they just about killed me. was at a medium sized club with a large dance floor, and by the end of their set, the crowd was pushed back like 20 or 30 feet from the stage, most of us out front or in the hallway leading in. overwhelming and quite painful, though they'd built up to that point over the course of the show - wasn't constant throughout. never seen MBV, but i've heard tales, and wonder whether mogwai were paying tribute.

flaming lips in the early 90s were loud as hell, but maybe not quite at ear-destroying mogwai levels.

speaking of ear destruction, the most damaging show i've ever seen has to have been the hellacopters in 1999. they were incredibly loud and i was incredibly drunk, near or in front of the PA for much of the show - a constant wall of piercing feedback throughout. when fu manchu came on afterwards, my ears were ringing so loudly that i could barely hear them. they were still ringing two or three days later, by far the longest post-show noise hangover i've ever experienced.

Azusa Plane were damn loud when I saw the.
:-/

Dinosaur Jr in 1992, I couldn't hear for days after.

In the non-metal category, loudest band I think i saw was Little Feat in the late 80s early 90s time frame. Killer band.

Quietest band: Im so used to going to hard rock/metal shows when I saw the Allman Bros. a couple years ago, I could barely hear it. They needed to turn up a little bit.

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.

why make it physically painful?? (/cry)

in the case of a lot of ppl listed itt I think the answer is basically 'because they're sociopaths'

Noxagt is about the loudest thing I've seen this year, just really grinding and relentless

last couple of times I've seen Green Velvet the bass has made drinks fall off flat surfaces

j mascis & the fog. j had something like 6 full marshall stacks + 5 or so other amps. didn't have earplugs and i'll be paying for it 'til the day i die.

― 6335, Friday, April 28, 2006 1:43 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

j mascis & the fog were LOUD and unrelenting. prior to this show i've never had buzzing in my ears for more than 2 days. scared the shit out of me.

― bmus (bmus), Friday, April 28, 2006 1:50 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha, came here to say this. saw the reunited Dinosaur Jr. once or twice years later and they were surprisingly not quite so loud.

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.