Loudest band

Which band is the loudest band in the world is a subject of some dispute in musical circles. Many bands have claimed to be the loudest, measuring this in various ways including with decibel meters at concerts and by engineering analysis of the compact discs on which their albums are published. Nowadays, a lot of people claim the loudest band in the world to be Motorhead. Matt Ashare from The Village Voice attributes this competition to a notion that "loudness equals greatness", a notion that he states to be clearly false.

This notion pervades rock music, however, to the extent that it has been satirized. In the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, the band is presented by the fictional film maker Marty di Bergi, as "one of England's loudest bands". One popular joke from the film features Nigel Tufnel displaying the band's amplifiers which are calibrated up to 11, instead of up to 10, allowing them to go "one louder". As a consequence of this real bands and musicians started buying equipment whose knobs went up to 11, or even higher, with Eddie Van Halen reputedly being the first to do so. Marshall, the company that provided amplifiers for the film that the custom marked knobs were applied to, now sells amplifiers such as its JCM900 (first sold in 1990) whose knobs are marked from 0 to 20.

In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the plutonium rock band Disaster Area is "generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all." (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, beginning of Chapter 17). The first paragraph of chapter 17 states that "regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet".

The Heavy Metal band Manowar is one claimant of the title of "loudest band in the world", citing a measurement of 129.5 decibels in 1994 in Hanover. The Guinness Book of World Records once listed it as the record holder for the loudest musical performance for an earlier performance in 1984. However, Guinness does not recognize Manowar's later claim, because it no longer includes a category of loudest band, reportedly because it does not want to encourage ear damage.

The Who were the last band listed as the record holder, at 126 decibels, measured at a distance of 32 metres from the speakers at a concert at Charlton Athletic Football Ground on 1976-05-31. Other previous record holders include Deep Purple (117 decibels), The Rolling Stones , and KISS.

Metallica has styled itself the "loudest band in the world". However, after one concert on 1997-11-11, which the band dubbed the "Million Decibel March", the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that "neighbours who [had] feared the worst from the self-styled Loudest Band in the World complained more about the sound from the news choppers circling overhead".

British punk band Gallows allegedly broke Manowar's previous record for loudest band in the world, claiming to have achieved 132.5 decibels, however, this record was claimed in an isolated studio environment as opposed to live.

Further reading

• Jonathan Ringen (2005-11-18). "Music Making Fans Deaf?". Rolling Stone. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• "Mick Fleetwood Tells Boomers How to Keep Rockin' — Responsibly". Healthy Hearing. 2005-04-11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) — Mick Fleetwood performs the "World's Quietest Concert" to help educate people about the risks of loud concerts.