Heavy metal and black holes.

The Amon Amarth concert I attended last week may, in fact, be the last metal show I go to.  It was one of those perfect nights.  The opening band, Skeletonwitch, was brutally amazing and set the tone for the entire night.  Enslaved, one of my favorite bands, opened their set with my favorite song off their new album, RIITIIR.  Finally, Amon Amarth blew the roof off the place.  The songs off their new album, “Deceiver of the Gods,” are pretty heavy already, but they truly shine when performed live.  I think my ears may still be ringing from the avalanche of heavy metal I met full-on last week.  It was totally worth it.

My favorite moment of the show had more to do with the crowd’s behavior than the bands’.  I normally cannot stand crowd-surfers.  I’ve been kicked in the head by too many of them.  At this show, however, the crowd helped a kid in his wheelchair crowd-surf… in his wheelchair.  The place erupted.  I went nuts.  Amon Amarth got these huge, very un-metal smiles on their faces at the sight of it.  When the wheelchair crowd-surfer was brought to the front of the stage and lowered down by security, the lead singer fist-bumped him on his way down.  It was a pretty awesome sight, and it restored my faith in metal show crowds.

Turns out the universe is pretty metal itself, too.  A supermassive black hole actually emits sound waves, and the “note” is the deepest sound detected from any object in our universe.