loudest band you've ever seen

I should also mention Big Sugar as being notable loud.

however, it's still one of my favorite shows i've ever been to.

Sugar was really loud, as was a Nashville Pussy show I saw a year or so ago in a small club. I've seen bunches of hard guitar shows, but those two stick out in my head along with the Prong gig.

Tricky had the most ungodly loud bass sound I have ever heard live. It did not have that high mids cutting into your head like a hard rock show, but the bass literally would come in waves and rattle your body.

The weirdest thing happened at the ATR show I saw in Chicago. Granted it was effing LOUD - but also incredibly physical, vis a vis the "mosh pit" to use the parlance of our times. When we exited said pit, we made sure all limbs were intact and my friend Christina found she had a new pager on her belt (?!!!) She had somehow hit someone, or jumped simultaneously with someone in a way that unclipped the pager from them and re-clipped it onto her. Very strange. Any Chicago people remember loosing a pager in 2000?

Black Flag (five-piece line up with Dez) somewhere in downtown LA.
Curve (Cuckoo tour at the Palace)

and believe it or not... Yes (90125 tour at the Forum)

MIA was followed by LCD Soundsystem, at appropriate volume.

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