Some The Most Brutal Mosh Pits of All Time Caught on Video

Nothing Gets the crowd going like a good old fashioned Mosh Pit Here are Some The Most Brutal Mosh Pits of All Time Caught on Video

Moshing or slamdancing is a style of dance where participants push or slam into each other, typically during a live music show. It is usually associated with “aggressive” music genres, such as hardcore punk and some styles of extreme metal, especially thrash metal, which borrowed the practice from hardcore punk. In the late 1980s, moshing crossed over into the mainstream and it was done at concerts by grunge bands and other styles. It is primarily done to live music, although it can be done to recorded music.

Variations of moshing exist, and can be done alone as well as in groups. Moshing usually happens in an area called the “pit” (sometimes called a “mosh pit”) near the stage. It is intended to be energetic and full of body contact. Variations on the traditional mosh include “pogoing“, “circle pits” (where the participants bump and jostle each other as they move in a circle) and the more extreme “wall of death”. Some moshers swing their arms back and forth and move their legs in a rhythmic fashion. Moshing is typically done in an area in the center of the crowd, generally closer to the stage.

While moshing is seen as a form of positive fan feedback or expression of enjoyment, it has also drawn criticism over dangerous excesses occurring in offshoots. Injuries have been reported in mosh pits, and a few deaths have occurred in “Wall of Death” moshing, an offshoot that developed when fans at thrash metal shows adopted punk-style slamdancing

The term mosh came into use in the early 1980s American hardcore scene in Washington, D.C. Early on, the dance was frequently spelled mash in fanzines and record liner notes, but pronounced mosh, as in the 1982 song “Total Mash” by the D.C.-based hardcore band Scream. H.R. of the band Bad Brains, regarded as a band that “put moshing on the map,” used the term mash in lyrics and in concert stage banter to both incite and to describe the aggressive and often violent dancing of the scene. To “mash it up” was to go wild with the frenzy of the music. Due to his Jamaican-accented pronunciation of the word, fans heard this as mosh instead.

By the mid-1980s, the term was appearing in print with its current spelling. By the time thrash metal band Anthrax used the term in their song “Caught in a Mosh“, the word was already a mainstay of hardcore and thrash scenes. Fans of Billy Milano and the band Stormtroopers of Death have often used the term mosh as an acronym for the phrase “move over shit head” during crowded shows. Through the mainstream success of bands like Anthrax, Nirvana, Stormtroopers of Death, and the Melvins, the term came into the popular vernacular.