On November 25, 2023, twin brothers Tyson and Dylon Opalinsky of emerging metal band Opal in Sky drove to the Thunderbird Arena in their home base of Vancouver with a plan to interview audience members at a Meshuggah concert featuring In Flames and Whitechapel.
Dylon would be on screen for their first interview-style video for their popular TikTok account. Their single question for metal fans that night: "Do you wear ear protection at concerts?"
Concert security didn't let their camera bag through, so Tyson and Dylon had to make do with a phone and a pocket mic. But when they posted the results a few days later, the video went viral, garnering over 500,000 likes and 4,000,000 views to date for a very metal public service announcement: "Just Wear Your Earplugs No One's Gonna Think You're A Pu**y."
The brothers had worn earplugs for a long time. Their parents had suggested it when they first started going to shows as teenagers in the late 2000s and early 2010s. With earplugs in, they found they still enjoyed live music and mosh pits, and their ears didn't ring the next day with tinnitus.
"We can't stress enough how important it is to protect your hearing, especially in our scene when it's just so loud," Dylon says. "Even when you're in a big stadium."
Opal in Sky released their debut album, Dream Shift, in 2024. Now they regularly remind audience members at their own shows (and on TikTok) to wear ear protection.
I was excited to discover their advocacy for earplugs. I've been wearing them since the mid '90s after I developed chronic tinnitus playing drums and other instruments.
There are lots of great earplug brands. I often wear a pair made by EarPeace. Like all higher-quality earplugs, EarPeace have special filters that don't muffle or distort music. A concert will sound pretty much exactly like it does without them, just at a lower volume. They're designed to be discreet: they go deep in my ears, and you can hardly see I'm wearing them.
But when music is really loud, I'll use a pair of classic orange foam earplugs, which have the highest noise-reduction rating. I recently put them in for some Afrobeats during an Oxlade concert at The Axis Club in Toronto.
The Opalinsky brothers use the brand Loop, which became very popular after the pandemic. Loop earplugs are designed to look like jewelry, like an earring inside of the ear.
"It's a pretty cool design," says Tyson. "They don't slide out, and going hard in that mosh pit, they don't come out, don't wiggle around."
Similarly, Eargasm is a brand on a mission is to change the culture around hearing protection. When I started wearing earplugs in the '90s, there were none available that seemed sexy. But Eargasm now sells earplugs with gemstones and even ones that light up.
If you've been to a concert without earplugs and experienced tinnitus, audiologist Marshall Chasin says, "The worst thing you can do is worry about it."
Chasin has specialized in caring for musicians' ears in Toronto since the mid-'80s. "We all have tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, from time to time," he says.
He says you should relax after exposing your ears to excessive sound. Stress can make tinnitus worse. You should also take a break from sound the next day and not do something loud like mow the lawn. Then go get a good pair of earplugs for your next concert.
Tinnitus is not the only impact of loud music, and concerts aren't its only source. The World Health Organization, which marks World Hearing Day every March 3, warns that over a billion young people are at risk of hearing loss from unsafe listening practices that include high volumes through earbuds, which is especially risky when listening for long periods of time.
Whether live or through earbuds, the genre of music you're listening to at a high volume doesn't matter. Metal is notoriously loud, and the bass in Afrobeats is often something you can feel in your bones, but even folk or classical can be cause for concern.
"The ear doesn't care what you're listening to," says Chasin. "It's the sound level and how long you're exposed to it. So AC/DC and Mozart are equally damaging in that respect."
As for Opal in Sky, they love the raw emotion of their loud genre, but they're also excited to be making an impact on concertgoers' habits with earplugs. One young metalhead they captured on the viral video from the Meshuggah concert was not wearing them. Afterward, his friends wouldn't stop pestering him about it, so he started. Later, at an Opal in Sky show, he told the brothers he's now hearing better after concerts.
"Hopefully a lot more people will watch that video as well," Tyson says, "just to showcase exactly how important it is."