Babymetal is a Japanese kawaii metal band. Mix cute with heavy metal and you get Babymetal band. This band became almost an instant hit when it was launched as it was a never seen before unique mix of kawaii and heavy metal. Today, they are loved by not just Japanese rock fans but rock music fans from around the world.
In this article, you will learn more about the band, their debut, best albums and live performances.
The band consists of Suzuka Nakamoto as “Su-metal” (Vocal and Dance) and Moa Kikuchi as “Moametal” (Scream and Dance). The band is produced by Kobametal from the Amuse talent agency. Their vocals are backed by heavy metal instrumentation, performed by a group of session musicians known as the “Kami Band” at performances.
This is really a great collaboration of heavy metal with kawaii culture of japan. The fans get best of both worlds with this music that is an awesome blend of kawaii and heavy metal rock.
Those who see Babymetal band music videos or live performance videos first time are left in awestruck as they have never seen anything like this before in any genre of music.
For western world, this is crazy, in a good way. Checkout some of the best and most hilarious comments on their videos.
“This is like Doom Eternal with Animal Crossing” – Lucas
“Great! It’s like: -Mom, I want to make a heavy-metal group. Ok? -Ok. But you have to take your little sisters with you.”- Ahtoh
Babymetal’s costumes take a variety of cues from the popular Japanese Gothic and Punk Lolita styles, with an emphasis on red and black.
The babymetal band was formed in 2010 and their major debut single “ Ijme, dame, zettai” along with 2nd single “Megistune” both ranked in the Top 10 Oricon chart in Japan.
Over the time, the baby metal band members performance is getting better. Previously they would not enagage with audience so much though now they seem to be in complete control on stage, enjoying while performing and engaging with audience.
In March 2014, they took to the stage of Nippon Budokan for a 2-Days gig making them the youngest female act to ever perform there.
Their 1st studio album BAYBMETAL made it into the US Billboard chart. In summer of the same year, they embarked on their first World Tour, performing on the Main Stage at UK’s prodigious festival Sonisphere Festival 2014 in front of 65,000 festival goers, and supporting Lady Gaga on her “ArtRave: The Artpop Ball” 2014 Tour. Below is Baby metal’s live performance in 2014 UK tour.
In fall they were back for additional headline shows in Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City and O2 Academy Brixton, London. In January 2015, they headlined a show at the 20,000 capacities Saitama Super Arena, and in June 2015, they headlined a show at the 25,000 capacities Makuhari Messe.
In summer of 2015, BABYMETAL received awards from UK music magazines “Kerrang!” and “METAL HAMMER”. BABYMETAL was nominated in the Kerrang! Awards 2016 for “Best Live Band”. The prestigious event took place on June 9 at London’s The Troxy Theater, and was hosted by Justin Hawkins of The Darkness and Benji Webbe of Skindred. For second consecutive year BABYMETAL wins an Award, this year they won the “Best Live Band” Award against bands like: Black Veil Brides, Twenty One Pilots, Nightwish, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes. Last year on June 11, 2015 BABYMETAL was the winner of “The Spirit Of Independence” Award,
They then performed in front of a staggering 90,000 people at the prestigious Reading and Leeds Festival in August. To show you the live show from the crowd point of view, here is a video taken by a fan from the middle of the crowd. You can see in the video the craze among the fans for Babymetal band.
In case you are wondering why the pushing and shoving going on in the music scene in a circle, then we are happy to answer this for you. This is a trend or you can say Babymetal style of moshing, known as mosh’sh (モッシュッシュ, mosshusshu), described a safe, fun, friendly game of push and shove. This mosh’sh is common game played by the fans during the live music concerts of Babymetal.
The band uses the hand gesture of the kitsune to symbolise the band’s supposed divine inspiration.
Initially, the band members were shown photos of the sign of the horns, but mistook it for the head of a fox. Rather than correct the error, the management accepted the kitsune sign as the band’s sign.
This Babymetal sign or gesture is referred to in Japanese as キツネサイン or Fox sign. Associations to Shinto shrines and fox masks are present in some of their works, so it might have been capitalized later on as part of their brand.
In the given context, there is likely no deeper meaning besides a cute greeting between girls. Perhaps used like the Peace sign. The sign itself probably predates the band. As it’s see used in various places including the WWE, as the “Too Sweet Sign”. The gesture itself predates modern pop culture and can be see in Buddhism or Hinduism as mudras called the Apan or Simhamukha, depending on the culture.
In their concerts, Babymetal are accompanied by a backing band. In their early stages, the backing band consisted of the “Babybones”—a group of nameless individuals dressed in skeleton costumes that would mime live performances while pre-recorded studio tracks were being used.
In late 2012, Babymetal debuted a live band for their live performances which they referred to as “Full Metal Band” – a group of live musicians dressed in white robes and corpse paint. They have since been referred to by band members and fans as “Gods of Metal” and more recently “Kami Band”.
Babymetal’s music videos “Gimme Chocolate!!” went viral in 2014. Currently, at the time of writing this article, the video has received 115 million views and 1Million likes on YouTube.
USA Today’s Brian Mansfield commenting that the “video looks like some kind of bizarre animé, with a dark-goth set and band members playing in skeleton costumes, and the three girls execute intricate choreography, flash heart signs and make windmill arm motions like they’re playing air guitar”
In regards to their music video for the song “Karate”, Moametal said that she’s “very proud that they are now representing this culture that came from Japan through their music, and it’s a way for more people outside of Japan to also learn what karate is all about.”
In the music video, karate they have tried to incorporate the karate into the dance moves and made the marial arts part of the choreography. Checkout the official video of Babymetal Karate here.
The lyrics talk about never giving up and moving forward. Yuimetal stated that the choreography for the song represented the lyrics and that “it’s important to be able to express the messages that they want to put across through the music with their dance moves.” The majority of their lyrics are in Japanese and they see their choreography as a way to break the language barrier.
Let’s just accept it that they have succeeded in crossing the boundaries even with songs purely in Japanese language. People around the world love them, their concerts happen in various parts of the world and people from different nationalities watch their videos on social media mainly YouTube.
