Concert Advice

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I need some advice. I just ordered non refundable tickets for a Godsmack concert in July. It's an outdoor event. After doing some reading about the band's live performances, I discovered that Godsmack often uses sudden, loud cosmic booms which can get as loud as 170 decibels. They are designed to temporarily distort reality and make the ground shake. I went through a similar experience with Shinedown last year. I wasn't expecting the loud explanations and they startled me to the point that I had to leave the arena early. I love heavy metal music and one of the reasons I bought Godsmack tickets is because I want to get back on the horse and see bands that I love. What can I do? I'm very excited to see this concert, but at the same time very nervous because sudden loud expletive noises have always made me feel very uncomfortable. Are there any headphones I can buy to significantly lesson the volume of the explosives there might be, while still allowing me to hear the music being played? I know there's a lot of earplugs on the market, but I'm really not an earplug person. Any advice on this would be good. I need to get ready for this concert and I have 5 months to do it.

Find someone on the pyro crew and ask if you can watch whoever is sequencing.
If you know it's about to happen it should be way easier.

How does that work? I bought seats kind of far from the stage. I can't see the pyro screen from my seat and I don't think they want someone standing right in front of the pyrotechnics. I really like a lot of Metal music including Godsmack. I just wish heavy metal bands didn't have to launch so many loud explosives during their shows. I love loud music and fire, but I can't stand sudden loud noises. I was thinking about talking to my social worker to see if he can get me ready for loud sounds somehow. Maybe he can play foghorns and other startling sounds at random times when I see him? I'm not sure how exactly that would work since most loud things can't happen in a house. (Fireworks, sonic booms, monster trucks, fire alarms, etc.) Also, I wonder if it would be counterintuitive by making me afraid to see him. I'm not sure. I just want to be prepared for anything that might happen at this concert.

Last year when we walked out on Shinedown, we asked one of the venue workers what we could so to get some relief until the explosives calmed down. We were told that there were loud sonic booms scheduled to go off all night and that the best they could do was let me go in a sensory room. They said the sensory room which was occupied anyway, was a padded soundproof room which blocked all sounds and flashing lights. I didn't want ALL the sound blocked off. I still wanted to enjoy the music. I just wanted a place to go where I could see the performance, but at a slightly lower volume. It seems a lot of venues fail to truly understand high functional autistic people. Most of us truly love music just like everyone else. Music soothes most of us, calms us down sometimes, and sometimes gets us amped up and ready to focus on positive things. We just don't like sudden loud noises we aren't expecting and sometimes, we need the volume to be a little bit less than what most people can tolerate.

Seating...

I'm scratching my head.
I've never been at a gig where seating wasn't removed to pack more people in.

As to how I'd do it... i'd go to the mix desk and ask the sound guy who the pyro is.
He'll probably have a table next to the desk.
Of course, big gigs will have restricted access to the desk, and you'll need some time spent as close as you can get beforehand.
(Or if you're lucky you can find a discarded worker pass and get anywhere. I've done that more than once.)

I was invited to a combined arms demonstration once where they insisted we wear both earplugs and earmuffs.
They rolled a tank up to the edge of the bleachers and even though we were looking and expecting it to fire, when it did almost everyone there said "WTF was THAT ! "
Your whole body is percussively compressed as a cone of flame spits out of the barrel, a triangle of grass lies flat and every kangaroo on the arty range starts insanely racing in different directions..

Yet when they took the top 6' off the mountain with a 155 battery, a pod of emus strolled calmly past.
Maybe they're deaf, more likely they're just chill. I guess you can get used to anything.

That experience is why I got my pyro ticket.

Earplugs and mental preparation.

You paid your hard earned money for an experience that includes some booms. Clearly on some level you want that experience, so reminding yourself that's part of what you sought can probably help with how you experience them.

I'm not really an earplug person myself, but sometimes they're required PPE and one just needs to suck it up. When I worked in factories I'd literally scour the entire building to find the least terrible earplugs available on-site. They still sucked, but I'd remind myself they're less terrible than hearing loss.

You could consider over-ear earmuff style hearing protectors too, if earplugs are completely non-viable. Since they're not active, they should be cheaper than noise-cancelling headphones.

Do their shows have roughly the same layout? Would it help to watch a few recordings with the volume up as a simulation so you know the rough timing of when the booms come? And then on the day when you think a particular song will have a boom in it you can put some earmuffs on. I think carbonhalo's idea might be worth a shot, you have plenty of time to contact the venue and tell them your predicament.
I like concerts sometimes but only if I like every song, if there are songs I'm not bothered about I'm suddenly aware of where I am and kind of hate being all boxed in and having my view blocked. But when the music is good I can focus on that and dance to it. Flashy strobe lights can be annoying though so I tend to look down when that's happening. Concerts are always an ambivalent mix of super fun and super irritating and I look forward to the end. I wish there was such a thing as a pop or rock concert that had more limits on the number of people and toned down certain aspects. Cinemas do it. Why not concert venues?

I feel like for most of the rock sphere that sort of concert would be perceived as a failure. Rock bands will usually rebook at a smaller venue if the audience is much smaller than anticipated and will often trade a smaller maximum audience for guarantees of a higher audience density.

I believe there have been prog and alternative rock bands that have booked theatres and other 'non-concert' venues, often with lower densities (at the very least due to the lack of general admission tickets and spaces), but those live performances aren't really billed as concerts either.

Although, I will agree. On some level one thing I like about seeing a bunch of local punk/metal bands is that sometimes the audience density is pretty low. That said, anytime there's enough people for moshing I'm probably going to gravitate towards that. If it's not the sorta band where that's appropriate, I don't think I'd be that interested in seeing a live performance (even if it's music I otherwise like).