I don't have low self esteem.
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
7,739
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKqgE4BwAY"]BABYMETAL - ???????- Gimme chocolate!! - Live Music Video - YouTube[/ame]

Oooooooooooookay...

These girls have been around for months by now. When I first heard them, my reaction was "**** THIS BULLSHIT!!!!". I thought it was basically AKB48 with Heavy Metal music. I had earlier ranted on FaceBook about how Heavy Metal is dead in Japan and that they don't have bands like Mad Capsule Markets anymore, and that BabyMetal was Japan's way of putting the final nail in the Heavy Metal coffin while letting AKB48 and other bullshit take over. "Doki Doki Morning" was the first music video I watched and I think I stopped the song halfway.

But then after a few months of ignoring them and eventually forgetting about them, I watched an episode of A Dose of Buckley where he ranted not so much about the band itself, but about the critics criticizing BabyMetal for being commercialized metal. I have to agree with Buckley on this. I think those critics seem to have got the word "commercialized" confused with "cute" or "popified" (if that's even a word).

The funny thing is, WAAAAAAY before BabyMetal, Kelly Osborne did a metal cover of Madonna's Papa Don't Preach, and in the UK we had Point Break, a trio from Newcastle who combined the style of a boy band with the music of Heavy Metal and rock. I guess you could call them the darkest boy band. So perhaps now isn't really a time to complain about Metal being 'commercialized'.

So eventually I found myself listening to BabyMetal more and my opinions changed from an angry raging freak yelling "**** THIS BULLSHIT!!!" and flipping the bird at the monitor... to an expressionless face, and I thought to myself "Wait a minute, maybe I'm not looking at BabyMetal right. Maybe BabyMetal are supposed to be a sort of novelty or a style parody or something. If I'm gonna flip the bird at BabyMetal then I may as well flip the bird at Weird Al Yankovic too".

Although I didn't hate them anymore, I still wasn't sure what opinion to make. They definitely are cute, which is not what I hated about BabyMetal and is also not what I hated about AKB48 (I loved Kyary Pamyu Pamyu). The thing with AKB48 is that they are 90% cuteness and 0% talent. They are basically a Japanese female Justin Bieber / One Direction. BabyMetal on the other hand, there is SOME talent at least, and a good sense of humour. They can sing, they can rap (I guess), they can dance, they can look cute..

But then BabyMetal said something about they wanted to save Metal (or something). I presume this means they wanted to be taken seriously as a proper Heavy Metal band. Well I'm sorry but I for one don't think I can. After all, the way they mix Heavy Metal with cutesy JPop music, and their overall cuteness... I just think comparing BabyMetal with the likes of Iron Maiden, Slayer, Guns and Roses, Metallica, and even the likes of Slipknot and Mudvayne... is like comparing MC Skat Kat with the likes of Eminem, 50 Cent, NWA, etc...

And it's not because they're girls. There have been loads of Metal and Punk bands with female lead singers, some are even all female as a band, some even only have a female drummer while the rest are all male.

To conclude this, I guess I like BabyMetal now. They are fun to listen to after all. They're definitely not "Fucking Bullshit" as I called them earlier, I take that remark back. As a novelty or a style parody they're great, but will it 'save metal'? I doubt it. Maybe I'll consider buying their album.

Guess the moral of the story is give them a chance and you'll might like them!!

Interestingly, their music is being released in the UK (where I live). They've even had a gig in London. I doubt they'll have much of an impact here as they probably had in Japan, because.. 1 - They're Japanese. Sure PSY was popular here but Gangnam Style was a fad. It's not very common that we get stuff from Japan and when we do it's not guaranteed to be big here. Anime is only released directly on DVD to a niche audience here, it's not on any mainstream TV channels (imagine watching One Piece on ITV? :p), and Tokusatsu we only have in the form of Power Rangers. 2 - Heavy Metal doesn't seem to me as big in the UK as it used to be. We no longer listen to Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, we listen to a bunch of drunken idiots go "TONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY AAAAAAAARE YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNG!!!! SO LETS SET THE WORLD ON FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE!!!!"... No, how about you set YOURSELVES on fire you idiots!!!

(just kidding).

So anyway, that's my take on BabyMetal, now what's yours? Do you like BabyMetal? Do you hate BabyMetal? Do you think BabyMetal can be taken seriously as a Metal band? Do you think they're worth the hype or do you think they're overrated?

DISCUSS!!
 
Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2011
Messages
3,134
Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park are heavy metal?

Also, they're obviously trying to be cute ("Ukkyun! Zukkyun! Dokkyun!" or whatever they were saying).... If they're a metal band it's like they were talking in a valley girl accent and singing about hugs and kisses.

I think they're just a normal idol group with a music genre that most idol groups don't cater to. Personally, I think they're a bit too far on one side (I think SCANDAL's representation is ideal).

Anyway, shouldn't this be in the Rising Sun forum?
 
Last edited:
Henshin a Go-Go!!
Joined
Jan 12, 2009
Messages
1,219
So I'm not a metal head by any means, but as I understand it one of the main driving factors behind most metal is that its all about the tone and complexity of the music and how it's performed. metal, like punk and other similar genres are born to spit in the face of stuff like para para dancing, and headset mics, anything that takes away from the music or message or both (depending on the artist) is never even looked at as a possible avenue.

This has the basic sound of metal but the way that its being presented its kinda getting in the way of the genre's authenticity. Not to mention theres pretty much nothing about the girls performances that evokes metal, its all in the music. But the actually talented ones aren't getting the credit, its just some vaguely gothic lolita chicks who aren't particularly interesting and whose vocals could be transposed to any pop beat with a similar tempo and nothing would be lost or gained because this group is clearly not really about metal or any sort of rebel spirit of any kind, they're just a trio of girls who happen to have really generic and repetitive "metal" as their background music as opposed to the standard J-Pop sound.

To me, the best thing about bands that are sort of "duel genre", is that you sort of get to have your cake and eat it too. It's like; "I want something that sounds kinda like Chic combined with contemporary R&B. Boom! Ya got Bad Rabbits! and I feel like a group that aims to mix metal and J Pop should sorta partially satisfy both genres but this is clearly only really fulfilling the J Pop side and that makes it hard for me to really have much interest in this group.

PS People should check out Bad Rabbits, that band is sooooo good. I'd especially recommend the track 'Can't Back Down'.
 
Last edited:

JFC

♥ 大好き ♥
Joined
Jan 10, 2006
Messages
7,764
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeARpcDimx4"]YOUTUBERS REACT TO BABYMETAL - YouTube[/ame]
:laugh:​

For the record, the name of the group is stylized in "all caps", so I tweaked the thread title to reflect that.

Here's their official English language website and YouTube channel for anyone who's interested in finding out more about them:
- http://en.babymetal.jp/home/
- http://www.youtube.com/BABYMETAL

Anyway, shouldn't this be in the Rising Sun forum?
Indeed it should.

THREAD PUNTED.

Moametal = <3
 
I am the law
Joined
Feb 26, 2005
Messages
6,941
I dig them, they're a fun band that makes music that I can enjoy. Most metal bands nowdays take themselves WAY to fucking seriously. It's refreshing to hear a band take the metal genre and flip it on it's head a bit. Fun band w/ catchy songs.
 
Harumph.
Joined
Aug 15, 2007
Messages
807
I think it's respectable that they have an image that sets them apart from traditional metal bands.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of their music. The cute vocals do nothing for me.
 
Welcome
Joined
Mar 5, 2011
Messages
5,831
The title makes no sense. You obviously know it's spelled BABYMETAL because you have a video from the official YouTube channel called BABYMETALofficial with BABYMETAL in the title.
 
I don't have low self esteem.
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
7,739
Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park are heavy metal?

Well I thought they were. If not then what sort of music are they? I'm sorry but I always thought all Metal sound the same... well, don't get me wrong, I can tell the difference between say.. Iron Maiden, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Guns and Roses, Slipknot and in this case BabyMetal, but I always thought the whole thing was called Metal.

And I'm also embarassed to admit that I thought Punk was Heavy Metal too.

But hey, at least I'm not dumb enough to think Elvis was metal!! :p

Oh wait..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D06gGT-pkiA

The title makes no sense. You obviously know it's spelled BABYMETAL because you have a video from the official YouTube channel called BABYMETALofficial with BABYMETAL in the title.

Well, no. I know it's spelled like this by the actually letters (I'm not illiterate!! DUUUUH!!!), but I wasn't at the time sure it was meant to be spelled in all capitals.

And also I hate it when people do this sort of thing. It's annoying. I can understand why people spell BBC (for example) in all caps because it stands for British Broadcasting Corporation. But what does BABYMETAL stand for? Big Annoying Boring Yabble... I dunno. Also HMV changed their name to simply hmv which pissed me off. It looked like it says "hoomv". Another thing I find silly is Tokkyuger was apparently supposed to be spellt "Toqger", but I couldn't be bothered so I spelled it "Togger" instead. Really it supposed to be spelled "烈車戦隊トッキュウジャー", but.. whatever.
 
Henshin a Go-Go!!
Joined
Jan 12, 2009
Messages
1,219
Nah man, most of those groups are in the same general area of the Music tree but they fall into various sub genres and such. For instance Iron Maiden, Slipknot, and Limp Bizkit are all metal but Iron Maiden is classic metal, like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest; whereas Limp Bizkit and Slipknot fall more under Nu Metal with bands like P.O.D. and Korn. Linkin Park is a special case where they started as a rap-centric Nu Metal band but have moved more towards a more Rock/Hard Rock sound. But honestly metal is the one genre where there are almost as many sub genres as there are bands.

Also yeah, Punk and Metal are different genres, but they are pretty closely related and Punk's origins can be traced back to Metal so you're actually not too far off, its just that Punk eventually grew large enough that it became a whole new genre.

Also NateRiver; Chill. He didn't know how the band's name is stylized, its not that big of a deal.
 
Last edited:
Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2012
Messages
3,803
I saw that video for 'Gimme Chocolate' a while back and thought it was interesting, although none of their other songs really seemed as catchy to me.

A couple of weeks or so ago they suddenly popped up for a gig in London. As far as I can tell it was their first time in the UK but they played a pretty big venue and it got loads of coverage in the music press. It seems to be dying down again so maybe it was just a blip, but I was surprised at just how big a splash they made.
 
Top