Last night in Melbourne, AC/DC proved once again why they are rock icons — by literally shaking the city. At their first Australian show in over a decade, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), the band’s performance triggered seismic activity that registered on the city’s monitoring equipment.
According to the Seismology Research Centre (SRC) in Richmond — located about 3.5 km from the stadium — the concert recorded vibrations in the 2–5 hertz range. Chief scientist Adam Pascale explained: “The sound waves that people were experiencing nearby and feeling something through their bodies, that’s the equivalent to what our seismographs feel.”
Pascale added: “We’re picking up the ground motion, we’re not picking up the sound from the air. So you’ve got speakers on the ground pumping out vibrations … and also the crowd jumping up and down is feeding energy into the ground.” Residents as far as 10 kilometres away reported hearing the concert clearly — one said it was “like they were at the concert, it was so loud.”
While the magnitude of the tremors was significant, the SRC noted that the signals were still below those recorded during Taylor Swift’s previous shows at the same venue. “Last night, at AC/DC, the signals were about five times lower than the Taylor Swift concerts,” Pascale said.
This event comes as AC/DC launch their Australian leg of the worldwide Power Up Tour, their first national outing in Australia for over ten years. With a substantial crowd and speaker system in place, the real-world impact is clear: this was more than a concert — it had measurable geological effect.
For the Irish audience, it’s a reminder of the power of live music at stadium scale — and how the ground itself can feel the energy of the crowd. With AC/DC’s next Melbourne show scheduled for Sunday night, it might be worth checking if our own monitoring devices (or floors) are shaking along.
