Heavy Metal

Posted on - September 16, 2019

Motorhead, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Saxon, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Megadeath.

All classic heavy metal legends from a period of rock greatness.

If you like that sort of thing.

Not only memorable tunes and great riffs – but many records broken too (we don’t mean the actual vinyl – we’re talking about the Guiness Book type-records)

So Norris McWhirter and his brother would be happy to see these amazing heavy metal facts:

Loudest Band

Although the loudest band in the universe is reported to be Disaster Area (according to the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy), the loudest ever officially recorded band was in fact Deep Purple. In 1972 at the Rainbow Theatre, London they registered an incredible 117 decibels.

A bit louder

The Who set a record that stood for over 8 years in 1976 when they played at Charlton Athletic Football ground and measured 126 decibels – and that was only 100 feet from the speakers. Deafening. Maybe that’s where the idea for Tommy came from – he was deaf, dumb and blind – and at those levels it’s no surprise.

*Keith, Roger, Pete & John at their first Durable fitting job. It didn’t go well. They told us they had experience. We won’t be fooled again!.*

Louder still

Led Zeppelin were recorded by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in 1969 at a gig in Canada playing at 130 decibels – described as ‘an earthquake of sound’.

*Not to be out done – rival durable installation team LedZep – finished on time and on budget. Shame the music took off. But there’s always a job going here if you want it lads.*

130 decibels was also the level recorded when Motorhead played Cleveland in 1984. They were so loud the vibrations cracked the ceiling and plaster and debris started to fall down on the crowd. The power had to be cut to stop the band from playing.

Lemmy was quoted once as saying “We are so loud, if we moved next door to you your lawn would die”.

*Lemmy’s LA Apartment. We did the windows. He could’ve tidied up a bit before we took the pics though…*

Loudest?

Love them or loath them American Glam-Metal gods Kiss hit 136 decibels in 2009 in Ottowa at a festival – prompting concerns from the State Commission over health issues.

*Gene and the boys turn up for work at Caversham – making the most of ‘casual-dress Friday’…*

More louderer

Manowar were pretty terrible but did manage to reach 129.5 decibels – just short of the LedZep/Motorhead target – in Germany on 1984. However the old metal-heads went one better in 2008 – allegedly achieving a ridiculous 139 decibels – by using 10 tons of amplifiers over 40 feet high.

The loudest sound ever heard

The loudest sound ever heard wasn’t a band at all – it was the volcano Krakatoa erupting.

(apparently – we weren’t actually there – not even Tony was around in 1883…)

Much to the late Lemmy’s disgust I suspect.

A test of our metal…

Assuming you haven’t been to too many metal gigs and therefore have reasonably functioning senses – here’s a little metal-themed case study that we think is a rather interesting use for our window film.

Our client came to us after the toughened glass inner pane of the high-end metal clad reception desk (which cost over £30k btw – that is a lot of desk!!) had broken into thousands of granules. It was a bit of a mess and certainly not the intended look they were going for.

So it had to be fixed.

But they wanted (understandably) to avoid the excessive cost of replacing it – and there was also a risk of damaging the desk if and when the glazing unit was removed.

We installed a film that is designed to make the glass look like sheets of brushed aluminium – hiding the broken pane, applied across the whole desk so it looks uniform and smart – and blending beautifully the surrounding metal frame work.

*Terrific final result – complete with severed head – in-keeping with the ‘heavy metal’ theme…*

Full metal jacket

The term ‘heavy metal was first coined by Steppin’ Wolf (the artist behind ‘Born To Be Wild’) – but he was talking about motorbikes at the time.

AND heavy metal can really damage your health.

Obviously hearing is impaired and neck pain etc from too much head-banging.

It can even be a disability.

A man in Sweden had his heavy metal addiction classified as a disability, and was given financial benefits and allowed time off work to go to metal gigs. He went to 300 gigs per year.

Sweet.

*Judas Priest’s Rob Halford having just finished doing the windows on his mum’s house in 1978*

Metal gurus

Durable have a large range of window films in all sorts of finishes for all sorts of problems.

We have been working with window film for over 50 years.

We are the oldest window film company in Europe.

There is not much we don’t know about dealing with problem glass.

Why not call us today and find out how we can help you?

Heavy Metal

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