I found myself curious the other day about what the loudest concert of all time was. The more I thought about it, though, the more it seemed like a strange record to set. After all, in the age of amplification, it’s not like volume is tied to skill. We’re not talking about having an all-time diaphragm capable of honking the hell out of a tuba, but something that feels more reliant on gear, knob-turning and a deep disrespect for the eardrum.
Still, Guinness (but of course) records such things, and the original mark was set by the Who in 1976 at 126 decibels. That felt right to me. After all, the Who were known for a wild live show, and they were one of the bigger names in rock history. Again, though, we’re talking pure volume here. Meaning if a band wanted to upstage the Who in this particular realm, they didn’t have to be better, just louder. Which begs the question: Isn’t the record basically up for grabs for whatever band decides to break it, fans’ hearing be damned?
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Sure enough, going through the records, there was another band that seemed to have made repeatedly smashing the “loudest concert” record an actual goal. A metal band called Manowar.
They’re far from unknown, but they still do seem a little out-of-place sandwiched in between bands that feel like they’ve truly earned it, like Iron Maiden and Motorhead. That said, the fact that they’re so obsessed with this record made perfect sense. It even dovetailed nicely with the “turn it up to 11” Spinal Tap nature of the record itself, because Manowar are an absolute cartoon of a metal band. KISS performs in full costume and still somehow feels like they’re not laying it on quite as heavy as Manowar and their lead singer, who’s never met a leather bodice he didn’t love.
They’re obsessed with “real metal” and are known for the tagline “death to fake metal,” which is only made funnier by the fact that the aesthetic and vibe of real metal, to them, seems to be very similar to the cover of a romance novel. It’s as if Danzig got on antidepressants and became really annoying. So, of course, for them to hold their crown of The Ultimate Metal Guys, they must have felt the need to be the loudest band around. Their riders even had minimum volume requirements.
They would seize the record from the Who in 1984, and hold it until 1994, when they would beat themselves with a volume of 129.5 decibels. The title would change hands over the next decade, stolen by Motorhead and lesser-known bands like Leftfield and Gallows. This clearly didn’t sit right with Manowar, who put them all to shame — during their soundcheck, thankfully for the audience — at the Magic Circle Festival in 2008, when they reached 139 decibels, which is 19 decibels louder than a jet plane, 9 louder than an ambulance and a single decibel away from being basically a continuous gunshot.
Here’s where I admit that the title is a slight lie, because though they did break the record three times, not all of them were made Guinness official. That’s because Guinness stopped tracking it after Manowar set it a second time so as to not encourage hearing damage. Meaning there’s a non-zero chance that Guinness stopped officially tracking the record specifically to stop Manowar’s obsession with it.