Let me tell you about the most religious moment of my life.

Sure, I’ve been to Israel to witness the Western Wall. And like most middle schoolers close to the Mason-Dixon line, I was bestowed with the honor of a bat mitzvah.

But on the eve of my 20th birthday, I stood in a desolate field in Tennessee with 80,000 strangers.

We stood in unison, overcome with shock, awe and spirituality as we witnessed five Brits blow us away with the longest live performance of their career.

These weren’t just any old rock and rollers from across the pond. This – this was RADIOHEAD.

The quintet quietly launched into its seminal song “Karma Police” as we swayed with the band’s strums and sang along in perfect time.

The song ended, but lead singer Thom Yorke re-emerged and began to repeat the song’s closing line, “For a minute there, I lost myself…” a capella, under a single spotlight.

In this field, amidst the open air, one literally could hear a pin drop between every pause. It was so silent I could nearly hear pulsations of my own heart.

After a few repetitions, Yorke backed away, the lights went out and a healthy five seconds went by before anyone moved to speak or applaud. We literally lost ourselves, and recalling my first evening with Radiohead still gives me a rush.

In what I could hardly believe was reality, Radiohead demonstrated its incomparable and ungodly level of command, and its strength still resounds today – a day that will go down in history.

The band is turning the world backward with the release of its seventh studio album, poignant and politely titled, “In Rainbows.”

The double-disc is rumored to have been completed since mid-summer and Web sites with cryptic messages and counterfeit countdowns have infiltrated the Internet.

That was until Oct. 1, when the band’s creative center, guitarist Jonny Greenwood, placed a personal announcement on the band’s blog stating: “Our record is finished. We’ve decided to call it ‘In Rainbows’ and you can get it in 10 days.”

Today marks the most unorthodox unveiling the music industry ever has seen.

No physical album will exist until December, and no advance copies have been issued. The only way to obtain the album is to download it, “pay what you wish” in British pounds and wait for a secret retrieval code via e-mail.

Call it crazy and communistic, but it’s one thing for sure – inconceivably creative.

It’s with this creative command that Radiohead credibly continues to reinvent the wheel and challenge its audience – and this time around, the band’s ambition is causing an acute apocalypse.

What we have on hand here is bigger than style or substance. It’s what another legendary band of Brits, The Beatles, beckoned and dreamed for us 40 years ago – a revolution.

Radiohead is embracing life – an often frightful kind of life it has depicted throughout the last decade dominated by dullards, dictators and technology – by putting everything in its place.

I have lost myself in Radiohead’s legacy, but today, building on the past, altering our present, and forsworn to fracture the future, the world will subsequently submit, bound to lose itself “In Rainbows” for all time.

- Samantha Promisloff is a variety stringer for The Red & Black.