Babymetal - The Metal Idols

Heavy Creamy

It's perhaps a somewhat obvious observation, but to any Italian born from the 1970s onward, Japanese sounds, in some way, familiar. Not that it's a language we speak or understand, but it's certainly one we recognize. It evokes afternoons spent in front of the television, when the dubbing of cartoons would briefly give way to musical interludes, marked by an over-the-top melodicism, with peaks of epic grandeur or pathos bordering on the pornographic. We've known what idols are since the days of Creamy and Emy, "girly" characters whose adventures us boys followed too, all the same. Maybe, later on, as the years passed, we developed a passion for heavy metal, partly to give ourselves, at least as teenagers, a more grown-up and virile image, only to find ourselves, on the threshold of our forties, face to face with Creamy singing her sugary little songs over a backdrop of power riffs and double-bass drumming like there's no tomorrow. And, swallowing our shame, we turned up the volume without the slightest restraint.

However, on reflection, dismissing Babymetal as a mere guilty pleasure for hipster metalheads would be reductive and unfair. We're talking about a project that, with a naivety bordering on masochism, shook up the hard-and-heavy world, bringing a welcome breath of lightness and fun, creating a form of crossover that was, all things considered, unprecedented, and building a bridge - both artistic and geographic (barring a handful of enthusiasts, the Japanese music market remains alien to us Westerners) - across coordinates that hardly anyone else would have even imagined. That's no small feat, and there was no guarantee it would work.

Talking about naivety might seem paradoxical when referring to a product engineered from the ground up, like hundreds of idol groups in Japan before them, made up of girls raised almost in captivity, mere performers ("interpreters" would sound almost too generous) and completely detached from any creative process, which remains entirely in the hands of producers and composers working behind the scenes.

In this respect, Babymetal are no exception: they sing and dance, with typically Japanese dedication, songs and choreography that others have prepared for them. Nothing personal or distinctive ever emerges in their interviews. They lend their voices and bodies to a project devised by their agency, which they've carried forward for over 10 years now with admirable professional discipline (albeit with the defection of one of the three members in 2018).

What's certain, though, is that the girls (or, more accurately, the children), when they started out, were in fact utterly unaware of the musical genre they would end up performing. The project itself (merging so-called idol music with heavy metal) seemed more like one of those many Japanese oddities destined to be nothing more than a passing fad.

Their success was undoubtedly helped by the cultural climate of the last decade, with Japanese comics and animation going increasingly mainstream, and the central role of YouTube, the perfect medium for spreading all sorts of eccentricities.

And yet, news of their new releases always draws plenty of comments (many negative, of course), their concerts, not only at home, are packed, and countless kawaii metal bands - or all-female metal bands in general - have sprung up across Asia in the wake of SuMetal and her bandmates' success.

What do we talk about when we talk about "heavy music"?

In Italy there are metalheads who, whatever Atroci might think, never miss an edition of Sanremo. In Japan there are metalheads who work for major modeling and idol agencies, writing and producing sugary pop songs for children, teenagers and various dubious characters. Kei Kobayashi is a sarariman at the major agency Amuse, with a deep passion for Dream Theater and the most epic kind of power metal. In 2009, while following the group Sakura Gakuin, he's struck by the vocal talent of one of the girls, sensing in her something sharper than average, something held back not just by her age but, above all, by the context she's working in. Suzuka Nakamoto (one could make easy jokes about her being from Hiroshima) actually already has a decent career behind her at age 12: a child model in numerous commercials, before joining Sakura Gakuin she had been part of another Amuse-branded group, Karen's Girl. Above all, she has a supple, extremely powerful voice, still tinged with childish traits, which must have sparked in Kobayashi the curiosity to hear her tackle a power metal song. It must have worked, because the producer then came up with the idea of spinning off a Sakura Gakuin subgroup devoted to heavy metal, even though none of the girls asked to join the project had the faintest idea what that meant.

They told me the group would focus on a heavier kind of music (compared to Sakura Gakuin), but I had no idea what heavy music meant. Did it mean we'd be singing about heavy topics? So when I joined Babymetal, I understood: 'Oh, this is what heavy music is!' I was so shocked!

So spoke Moa Kicuchi, in 2009 a ten-year-old member of Sakura Gakuin who, along with her peer Yui Mizuno (their stage names being, respectively, Moametal and Yuimetal), was chosen to take part in this new project. It should be said that the two would always have a purely choreographic role compared to their older sister Suzuka (naturally, Sumetal), whose voice would remain one of the truly distinctive traits of the nascent Babymetal.

This delightfully silly name, as is often the case over there, hides more than one meaning: on one hand, “baby” is read by the Japanese in a way similar to “heavy”; on the other, it can mean “the birth of a new musical genre,” no less! Setting aside the pomp bordering on the ridiculous (the Japanese have their own particular concept of irony), it's rather hard to imagine Kobayashi actually believing in the group's future beyond a simple boutade. Originally, Babymetal was the “metal club” within Sakura Gakuin, and indeed their first single, “Dokidoki Morning,” was released on a 2010 record by that group. The track is, of course, silly and not particularly focused, but already somehow paradigmatic: it's not a metal song sung by little girls (which would have been the easier, lazier choice), but a blatantly pop, childish song onto which jarringly rocky guitar riffs and growled screams are grafted, over lyrics about…school troubles. Of course, for something like this to work, the right balance is needed, which here is totally absent – but that's just a matter of time.

With the following single (actually a split with the band Kiba of Akiba), the target is already perfectly hit: “Li ne!” and “Answer For Animation With You” add electronic elements to the recipe and, in some way, begin to distance themselves a little from idol music. The first track, in particular, is a danceable little bomb that whips together, in three minutes, pre-teen silliness, metal aggression, dance rhythms, a breezy chorus, and even a disarming attempt at hip-hop, so clumsy and out of place that it ends up being irresistible.

Some of their most recognizable iconographic traits also take shape here: the Japanese school uniform turned decidedly dark, in a riot of red and black, the semi-deranged dance routines courtesy of choreographer Mikiko, and the horns hand gesture modified to resemble a fox's snout (a touch that, I suspect, good old Ronnie James Dio would have rather liked), a tribute to the kami Kitsune, protector of metal, of which the group declares itself a messenger (not that Manowar have ever gone easy on such pomposities themselves, and without even the excuse of being teenagers).

The single, released in 2012, proves to be a massive hit at home – which allows the group to finally break free from Sakura Gakuin and live a life of its own, also starting to perform live, even at major festivals like Osaka's Summer Sonic Festival, although, in the early days, over pre-recorded backing tracks and with extras miming the instruments.

In the studio, the next step, only a few months later, is called “Headbanger!!” and marks another turning point: it's a power track of undeniable force and effectiveness, blessed with an epic, sticky melody reminiscent of the most aggressive anime theme songs, absurd little choruses, and a convincing crescendo that culminates in Sumetal's “hedabengaaaaa!” scream (in the video, inspired by j-horror, she appears as a girl for the first time, symbolically putting on lipstick) – a moment for the history books. The track has nothing to do with the previous ones, given the many, ever-changing songwriters involved – a trait that, while increasing the unpredictability of the material, also creates problems in terms of compositional cohesion. Which is the main flaw of the band's self-titled debut album Babymetal, released in 2014.

Rather than a coherent work, it comes across as a singles collection – and indeed it includes all those released up to that point. Where it works, though, it's pure spectacle: “Megitsune” is another power gem, spiced with electronics and influences from Japanese traditional music – in this writer's opinion, one of the best metal tracks of the third millennium. “Gimme Chocolate” is an adorably idiotic slice of bubblegum pop, hybridized with groove metal. “Atatsuki” starts out as a power ballad, before flowing into a gallop reminiscent of the best Vision Divine and Angra, with Suzuka's voice front and center. Too bad the middle section of the album is objectively weak, made up of tracks that tend to highlight the project's strangeness more than any real ideas. Things pick back up at the end, with the dramatic “Rondo Of Nightmare” (once again a stunning showcase for the singer, by then sixteen), the already-mentioned “Headbanger!!”, and the closing speed metal of “Ijime, dame, zettai,” released as a single shortly before the album and which, in one of its single versions, even featured guitar from Christopher Amott of Arch Enemy (the first of many Western metal scene artists who, over the years, would collaborate with the girls). As a bonus track on later editions of the album, “Road To Resistance” would be added, featuring Herman Li and Sam Totman of Dragonforce.

In any case, the die was cast: people started talking about Babymetal not just at home (the album reached number two on the Billboard chart) but across the rest of the world too. The trio embarked on tours across Europe and America, this time backed by real musicians (the “Kami Band,” which notably included virtuoso guitarist Mikio Fujioka, who died in 2018), both opening for Lady Gaga and appearing at metal festivals, where they were treated with warmth and respect by fellow artists (unsurprisingly) and by audiences (less of a given). Online, however, there was no shortage of harsh opinions from those who considered them a tasteless joke, almost an insult to the seriousness of metal music.

Resistance is futile

I don't know whether these detractors have actually listened to Metal Resistance, the group's second album, released in 2016, two years after their debut. Far from being an insult to metal, it's a celebration of it across all 54 minutes. The flaws of the previous record are addressed with more mature songwriting, and somehow the cohesion between tracks increases, without sacrificing variety, and despite the usual crowded roster of songwriters. Something is lost – it's true – of the absurd madness of the first singles, but it's genuinely hard to find a lackluster or forgettable moment. From the opening power blast of the already-mentioned “Road To Resistance” to the ballad (in rather shaky English) “The One,” the memorable tracks are countless: the unleashed off-beat j-pop over a heavy base of “Java,”, the groovy, almost ceremonial “Karate” (practically an adult version of “Gimmie Chocolate”), the melo-metal triumph of “Amore,” which flaunts supersonic-speed riffs, topped by Sumetal's voice, perfectly in control despite the track's difficulty.

The more “childlike” soul emerges in the nursery-rhyme “MetaTaro,” which nonetheless unfolds into a subtly unsettling and epic martial gait, and in the fun party song “Awadama Fever.” Elsewhere, the group ventures into the electronic, cinematic “From Dusk Till Dawn” (a masterpiece found only on the European version of the album) and the pummeling thrash of “Sis Anger,” before that excellent Dream Theater homage that goes by the name “Tales Of Destiny.” The production, just like on the first album, is stellar and absolutely flawless.

It's clear that mastermind Kobayashi wants to be taken seriously. He isn't content with the success his creation has achieved, nor with the trend that Babymetal has sparked. Following their success, in fact, metal groups made up entirely of girls, teenagers and children sprang up like mushrooms across Japan – some genuinely manufactured by idol agencies, but many not, even if they undoubtedly benefited from the popularity of Sumetal and co. Some try to echo the original project's oddness (see Ladybaby), while others attempt to vary the formula, incorporating more modern, complex elements (among the best, Passcode) or applying a rigorous, professional approach to the genre (Lovebites, who would deserve a feature of their own, are the best power metal band of the last decade). Others lean mainly on the visual, theatrical element (Band Maid, Necronomidoll) or on the comedic one (Hanabie).

Searching on YouTube and Spotify, it seems that today, in Japan, there are more women than men in the metal scene. And they're all colorful and fun.

Yes, much to the chagrin of the purists, in the end Babymetal really did christen “the birth of a new musical genre.” In their own way, they've made history, and they can afford to duet with Rob Halford (at the Alternative Press Music Awards in July 2016, they performed “Painkiller” and “Breaking The Law” together), to open for Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Korn and Guns N' Roses, and to fill the Budokan, the Tokyo Dome and even Wembley. All while maintaining a level of professionalism and seriousness that, to us Westerners, can seem extraordinary and, at times, almost cruel. Indeed, absolutely nothing is known about their private lives, and one might legitimately wonder whether they simply don't have one. Which, in fact, helps explain Yuimetal's departure in 2018, officially due to “health problems.”

Galaxy-hopping toward other worlds

Was it fair to expect anything different? No — and yet opus No. 3, “Metal Galaxy” (2019), is another little gem, despite not exactly promising beginnings: the two singles released ahead of the album, “Starlight” and “Elevator Girl”, don’t really hit the mark. The first is a classic, well-played slice of power metal, but with a slightly worn-out 80s-cartoon vibe, while the second is a groove metal track with no particular ambitions. The third, released alongside the album, is a different story and really perks up the ears: “Pa Pa Ya!” is the metal track anyone with even a shred of joie de vivre would dream of hearing on the dancefloor. Constantly broken rhythm, yet relentless, tribal percussive elements like there's no tomorrow, a silly yet irresistibly catchy and exhilarating refrain, and, as a bonus, a perfectly judged feature from Thai rapper F. Hero (actually closer to a raggamuffin style).

Fortunately, it's this last track that sets the paradigm for Metal Galaxy.

Babymetal was an album for headbanging, Metal Resistance for pogoing, while the third record is unmistakably built to make you dance until you're exhausted. And, to leave no doubt, after a brief intro it immediately drops an ace like “Da Da Dance”, an eurobeat masterpiece beefed up by Tak Matsumoto's guitar, enough to get even statues moving, and carries on with another thoroughly liberating track, albeit more measured, like “Shanti Shanti”, with its Bollywood influences.

In its mad dash to be fun and over the top, Metal Galaxy sacrifices the cohesion of its predecessor and recovers a bit of the locura of the debut. Here, though, everything is far more focused: the drunken folk metal of “Oh! Majinai” with Joakim Broden of Sabaton, the AOR of “Brand New Day”, the semi-rap tongue-twisting of “BxMxC” and even the doom metal, laced with ritual-music elements and growl vocals, of “In The Name Of”. There's a bit of everything packed into the grooves, right up to the magnificent closing one-two of “Shine” and “Arkadia” — majestic orchestral metal, superbly delivered by Sumetal.

The album is another huge success, and to capitalize further, numerous live albums are released in the following months, though they add nothing new.

Far more interesting is the collaboration with Bring Me The Horizon on the 2020 track “Kingslayer”.

By 2023, fans are awaiting the release of the fourth album, The Other One (finally, an album without “metal” in the title). Once again, several singles are released ahead of the record, and they throw fans for quite a loop, given the total absence of lighthearted tracks and the sharp turn toward “monochrome” atmospheres, to borrow the title of one of the songs. The band seems to want to break free of an image that's still partly goofy and childish, and the question, obviously, is whether its shoulders are broad enough to carry that off. In the end, the answer is yes: The Other One doesn't hit as hard as the previous records, but it still marks the start of a thoroughly respectable new chapter, built on modern metal that's sometimes symphonic (“Shingeki”), sometimes groove-laden (“Maya”) and electronic (“Time Wave”), always melodic, but never lighthearted.

Even where there's dancing (“Metalizm”, perhaps the album's best track), the idea isn't girls going wild on a stage, but an adult-filled dancefloor. It might have seemed convenient to freeze time, but “the seasons change and we are not the same”, and so farewell to kawaii metal — other bands are already reviving it, but Kei Kobayashi and his Babymetal clearly have no interest in repeating themselves. And that was perhaps the last confirmation needed to seal the absolute validity of their music.

Before heading out on tour, the band announced the arrival of a new member, reorganizing itself into a trio after five years: it's another former Sakura Gakuin member, Momoko Okazaki (“Momometal”). The only real change will probably be the loss of symmetry in the choreography, since the newcomer is much taller than the other two girls. Then again, given their advancing age, the visual side of things was bound to require a different approach anyway.

“Guilty pleasure” is a dumb, unbearably radical-chic label. There's nothing “guilty” about enjoying something that immediately strikes a chord, bypassing years of overthinking and increasingly refined, complex listening habits. We'll never love music the way we loved what we discovered as teenagers, so what's the point in sneering at immediacy and lightness, as if we were afraid of losing the (self-)esteem of our hard-won expertise, built up record by record? The Babymetal project (referring, of course, to everyone involved) has proven both lasting and fruitful: honest in its pursuit of success, bold in doing so while playing a different game from its natural home turf, hugely influential within a relatively short span of time, but above all, as fun as few others, and able to make the listener feel good, and right at home.

You could ask for more, but it's hard to ask for better.

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