What is the (subjective) coolest show, concert or performance you've ever been to in person?
Oh boy... There are many to choose from. I think I very easily get into any performance where it is clear that the performer(s) are having fun & have passion ("fun" in this case not strictly meaning "ha-ha laugh-out-loud fun") so I can count the number of truly disappointing gigs without having to take my socks off.
That being said, there is only one concert that has literally given me a never-before-felt reaction and opened a whole new part of my brain, and that was Sunn O))) at the Tavastia Club in Helsinki. Sunn, for reference, are the pretty much agreed-upon kings of drone doom metal, a subgenre characterized by nothing so much as oppressive walls of distortion mowing you down at a glacial pace.
Sunn O))) on tape is exhilarating and intense, but nothing really prepares you for the live experience. The show was packed, and for what felt like half an hour before the gig the fog machines started pouring out so that by the time the band members, dressed in somber black robes and cowls, took to the stage the entire room was filled with a thick artificial haze. The first chord goes beyond "loud": it is so loud, and so low, the air pressure kicks you in the chest as it blasts out from the speakers. And it doesn't stop. Hearing protection is pretty much mandatory, of course, but the constant rumble and buzz is more felt than heard as the mammoth songs slug forwards. It is a full-body experience whether you want it to be or not. Lights and lasers sparingly cut through the haze that grows even thicker by the minute since the fog machines never stop. At the show I went to, I saw someone in the crowd faint, just go from vertical to horizontal in a neat straight line.
At some point, I felt a completely new kind of high, a tingling euphoria that started as a knot in the back of my head where the spine meets the skull and exploded from there like electricity. I remember giggling. I was so god damn happy in that moment. I sincerely believe that it was, for the first time in my life, a moment of religious ecstasy. It very literally changed me, for before I couldn't even have conceived of a mental state like that, never mind imagine how it feels.
Now I know.