My Bloody Valentine playing in Brazil. Photo courtesy Baptiste Pons via Flickr.

The signs posted around the outside of the WaMu theater said it best: “Tonight’s show will be extremely LOUD”.

My Bloody Valentine, the Irish alt-rock “shoegaze” band who hasn’t released an album since 1991′s smash “Loveless” destroyed the earbuds of thousands of fans Monday at WaMu Theater. Earplugs were given out at the door, and MBV–known for their use of distortion, pitch bending and noise–put them to good use and pushed the limits of how loud a concert can get.

The show began with Brightblack Morning Light, an indie-folk-psychedelic duo who set the stage for the loudest band in the world by being one of the quietest. Their downtempo grooves are more apt for passing around a joint to, but they managed to fill the cavernous WaMu theater well enough and provide a nice relaxed calm before the coming assault.

As My Bloody Valentine took the stage in front of a pink projector screen reminiscent of the “Loveless” cover, I jammed the earplugs into my ears and prepared for the loudest thing I’d ever heard.

The Stranger’s blog put it best when they said that all the vocals sounded like  “AH LA LA//AH LA LA,” but that didn’t matter. MBV rocked HARD. Every song was drowned in a thick layer of high-frequency noise, which was unfortunately completely eliminated by the supplied earplugs. Tolerating the volume became a game if you wanted to hear everything that was going on, almost teasing you to take the chance of permanently ruining your hearing.

If that wasn’t enough, the stage was also outfitted with extremely bright strobe lights pointed directly at the audience, completing an audio-visual assault on the senses that can only be provided by My Bloody Valentine. There is really no other experience like their show–it’s a lesson in excess to the highest degree.

Despite said assault, myself and the other fans enjoyed every second.

The signs outside WaMu. Photo by Angelo Carosio

Moving through a setlist that included a good balance of material from their two albums and multiple EPs, the band showed that they aren’t just a one-album-band like many who are only familiar with “Loveless” think they are. Opening with “I Only Said,” they weaved through their catalog without really saying much of anything aside from “thank you for coming,” twice.

The high point of the show came during closer “You Made Me Realise,” where during the bridge the band constructed a wall of noise so unbelievably deafening that removing my earplugs for a few seconds felt like I was laying down beneath a 747 with its engines on full blast. The distortion fest grew and evolved during the course of the 20 minute jam fest as the band layered on more instruments and feedback. You could feel the noise in the air–the lower frequencies of it blasted through the theater and shook me to the bone. While it seemed like quite a few were leaving during this climax, many stayed and reveled in the amazing destruction.

The band promptly left the stage after You Made Me Realize, and did not come back for an encore. That wall of sound would make Phil Spector jealous, and nothing could have followed it up.

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