Quebec band Angine de Poitrine just sent six people to the hospital. Their music is entirely innocent.

The Montreal Jazz Festival just hosted a massive, free outdoor blowout for the Quebec band Angine de Poitrine. The site was filled to absolute capacity, a sea of bodies gathered for an evening of open-air entertainment. Shortly after the final notes faded, the headlines arrived: six people had been hospitalised following the set.

If you possess even a passing familiarity with medical French, the irony is almost too on the nose. "Angine de poitrine" translates literally to angina pectoris—the severe chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart. Combine that moniker with a half-dozen sudden hospitalisations, and you would be entirely forgiven for assuming the band is a pulverising deathcore act whose live shows consist of drop-tuned bass frequencies designed to induce literal cardiac arrest.

The reality is somewhat less dangerous. While Angine de Poitrine is indeed an explosive math-rock duo known for brain-melting time signatures and microtonal dissonance, they are not a literal public health hazard. They were, after all, booked at the Montreal Jazz Festival, an institution rarely associated with blunt-force trauma or structural venue damage.

The casualties of the night were the victims of a far more common festival affliction: the inevitable arithmetic of a massive crowd. Put enough people in a heavily congested space for a free gig, and the law of averages guarantees that a handful will eventually succumb to exhaustion, dehydration, or the sheer claustrophobia of the crush. The music itself was entirely innocent. It serves as a gentle reminder that a band's name is usually just an aesthetic choice, not a public health warning—though drinking a glass of water before wading into their crowd is probably still a good idea.