Two researchers from the Max Planck Institute set up a tank of 2-degree Celsius water in a tent at Wacken Open Air, the German metal festival that draws roughly 80,000 fans, and asked people to keep an arm submerged for as long as they could stand it.
The result was not what they predicted, and the honest version is more interesting than the headline version.
Across all 122 participants, the pre-registered confirmatory analysis found no significant differences in pain tolerance, pain sensitivity, or pain unpleasantness between those tested before the festival began and those tested on days three and four. The hypothesis, as written down in advance, failed. Only in a secondary analysis, after excluding 14 participants who reported six or more drinks on the day of testing, did a difference appear.
That analysis, published in Scientific Reports, found festival attendees kept their arms in the water significantly longer than the pre-festival group, with a medium effect size of 0.501.
Why Alcohol Had to Come Out of the Data
The exclusion was not a fishing expedition, and the authors explain their reasoning.
Alcohol is itself an analgesic. A systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled experimental studies found that acute alcohol raises pain threshold and lowers intensity ratings in healthy participants. At a festival where drinking is part of the culture, alcohol was pushing pain scores around in ways that had nothing to do with music, potentially masking any real effect in either direction.
Lydia Schneider and Thomas Fritz of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig ran the study during the 2023 festival, recruiting 60 people the day before the first band played and 62 during the third and fourth days. The two groups did not differ significantly in age, body mass index, general pain sensitivity, chronic pain conditions, gender, anticipatory joy, or baseline drinking habits, thereby strengthening the comparison. The design was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework before any data were analyzed, and the institute described the field setup in its announcement of the findings.
Anyone visibly intoxicated was excluded before consent, so the heavy drinkers in the dataset were people who reported drinking but could still consent and follow instructions.
Tolerance Moved, but Suffering Did Not
The specific pattern here matters more than the headline number.
The cold pressor task measures two separate things. The time from submerging the arm to the first report of pain is a measure of pain sensitivity. The time from that first report until they pull the arm out is a measure of pain tolerance. Participants also rated how unpleasant the experience felt on a visual analog scale.
Only tolerance changed. Sensitivity did not differ between groups. Unpleasantness did not differ. Festivalgoers were not feeling less pain or minding it less. They sat with the same level of unpleasantness for longer before acting on it.
Schneider put it plainly in the institute's announcement: "they were able to endure it for a longer period of time."
The authors interpret it as a proxy for resilience rather than analgesia, drawing on work showing that resilience correlates with pain tolerance but not with pain severity ratings. They carefully note that they did not administer any validated resilience scale, so resilience was inferred rather than measured.
One correlation runs counter to the obvious explanation. In the festival group, anticipatory joy was negatively correlated with pain tolerance, meaning the people most excited were not the ones who held out the longest. Whatever was happening, it was not simply good mood blunting pain.
The Oxytocin Explanation Is a Hypothesis, Not a Finding
The discussion raises the possibility that endogenous oxytocin release during intense social music events is a mechanism. No hormone was measured. The authors state plainly that these physiological mechanisms remain speculative and could involve a broader mix of catecholamines.
A second exploratory hypothesis failed outright. Heart rate variability, measured with chest-strap electrocardiography and used here as an index of emotional processing, did not differ between groups. Neither did heart rate.
There is also a prior study pointing in a related direction. The CoPainHell crossover trial had 45 participants at a Danish metal festival do cold pressor tests while listening to either Slayer or Enya. Pain intensity ratings were significantly lower during the Slayer condition, regardless of whether the participant liked the song. Notably, people who liked Enya more reported more pain.
What This Does and Does Not Support
The limitations are substantial, and the authors list them. The sample was mostly male, mostly German, and drawn from a single festival known in the metal community for being unusually friendly and inclusive. Alcohol intake was self-reported rather than measured by breath testing. Emotional assessment was limited to a single question about anticipatory joy. The study cannot determine whether the effect was due to metal specifically or to festivals in general.
Most importantly, the primary analysis was null, and the positive finding came from a post hoc subgroup. That is a legitimate exploratory result worth following up, not a demonstration that metal music relieves pain.
Nobody should reach for a Slayer playlist instead of prescribed pain treatment. What the work suggests is a testable idea: that intense, socially shared experiences involving difficult emotions may temporarily increase a person's willingness to sit with discomfort, a mechanism distinct from the relaxation-based music interventions used in most clinical settings. Given that resilience and acceptance both correlate with better outcomes in chronic pain, this idea warrants a well-powered trial with hormone measurement and a validated resilience scale.
People living with chronic pain should discuss management options with a qualified clinician rather than acting on preliminary field research.
Key Questions Answered
What did the study actually find?
No significant difference across the full sample. After excluding 14 heavy drinkers, the festival group tolerated cold pain longer, with a medium effect size.
Why exclude heavy drinkers?
Alcohol independently reduces pain sensitivity and intensity ratings, so heavy drinking in either group could mask or manufacture a music-related effect.
Did festivalgoers feel less pain?
No. Pain sensitivity and pain unpleasantness were unchanged. Only the length of time they endured the pain increased.
Does this prove metal music is analgesic?
No. The pre-registered analysis was null, and the positive result came from an exploratory subgroup analysis in a field study without a laboratory control.
Was oxytocin measured?
No. Oxytocin is offered as a possible explanation. The authors describe the mechanism as speculative.
How big was the study?
122 participants total: 60 tested before the festival and 62 during it, with 97 remaining in the analysis after excluding heavy drinkers.
