Watch a death metal audience hold its breath as this metalhead proposes marriage to his girlfriend in the middle of a mosh pit

(Image credit: Copenhell Instagram)

Here's something you don't see every day: a marriage proposal in the middle of a death metal mosh pit.

When Danish 'Pitch Black and Heavy Death Metal Tragedy' band Strychnos informed fans on Instagram that they'd been booked to play the prestigious Copenhell metal festival, annoucing "the next time we’ll ascend from our graves will be on Friday the 16th of June. We play the Hades stage at 15:00. Pitch Black Death Metal in the bleak light of day", they surely can't have anticipated that they would end up providing the backdrop to a seriously cute if wildly unorthodox marriage proposal.

Happily for the rest of us, fellow metalheads filmed the moment, which was then posted on the festival's official Instagram account. These sort of public gestures can sometimes go horribly, painfully, crushingly wrong, so there's a collective holding of breath from the watching hordes as the unsurprisingly shocked recipient of this romantic gesture clasps her hands to her face in disbelief before giving her answer to her kneeling boyfriend.

Watch the clip to see how it played out:

A post shared by COPENHELL (@copenhell)
A photo posted by on

Obviously the caption accompanying the footage - "We wish the happy couple a STORT TILLYKKE from the whole COPENHELL team!" - is something of a giveaway... But the joy on the faces of metallers gathered to watch Pitch Black Death Metal is sweet to see, and the ensuing wall of hugs which envelops the happy pair is just too cute.

The seriously impressive line-up for the 2023 event, held from June 14 - 17, included Guns' N' Roses, Slipknot, Pantera, Def Leppard, Ghost, Gojira, Clutch and more.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.