Fans of Heavy Metal Music Have More Pain Tolerance
/By Crystal Lindell
Angry and loud heavy metal music may not be good for your hearing, but it might actually be good for increasing pain tolerance. That’s according to a new study published in Nature by German researchers.
The researchers asked attendees at the German Wacken Open Air festival in 2023 if they experienced “music-induced analgesia” while listening to heavy metal music.
Sixty people were recruited before the festival began and put through a series of tests. Their results were then compared with those of 62 people who were recruited on the third and fourth day of the festival.
Before we go any further, take a look and listen to a sample of the Wacken Open Air festival, which bills itself as “the biggest metal festival on planet earth.”
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences did several tests to see if being at the festival had any impact on pain tolerance, pain sensitivity, or unpleasantness.
To test pain tolerance, they had participants place their hand and forearm in cold water for as long as they could tolerate it, up to four minutes maximum. An electrocardiogram was also used to measure their heart rate and “emotional processing.”
The researchers hypothesized that accepting unpleasant emotional experiences or difficult situations plays a central role in being resilient and tolerating pain – as opposed to masking those unpleasant emotions. Heavy metal music is known to help people express unpleasant emotions like anger.
“This aligns with common themes in metal music, which often expresses difficult emotions and life challenges, avoiding attempts to mask them with happiness,” the researchers wrote. “Combining such expression of negative emotionality with an energetic and activating soundscape may foster self-efficacy, an important component of resilience.”
Researchers found the music had no effect on pain sensitivity or unpleasantness, but they did find that pain tolerance was significantly increased for those who attended the festival.
"Participants perceived their pain during the festival not as less unpleasant or were less sensitive in perceiving it, but they could endure it for a longer time,” the authors said. “This seems to indicate that participants got more resilient, which means that they might have to a greater degree accepted feelings of unpleasantness towards the pain experience.”
Of course, it’s hard to say how much of a role heavy metal music played in the increased pain tolerance, since it could have also been caused by the social aspects of attending a music festival that is known to be “especially inclusive and friendly.”
One might guess the 85,000 people who attended the festival also engaged in some drug and alcohol use, which may have impacted pain tolerance. The researchers say any individual displaying observable signs of intoxication was excluded from the study.
In the end though, the only takeaway here is that sometimes you just need to scream along to some metal music to better tolerate pain – and honestly, that tracks.
