Metaruuu: Baby Metal live at sonisphere

Ohk well, this was the most anticipated band for me and quite a lot of people to be frank. Everyone was excited to see a Japanese band, which has model of a J-pop girl band and music from a Metal band. In a lot of way this sounds like something, which could totally be wrong with the whole thing to begin with. This is corporate created metal, which is just contradictory to the whole concept of rock n roll, but it might not be first band with such strong corporate backing. I mean, ofcourse ,the bands first earn name for themselves and then become a corporate entity or as they lovingly call them "sell-outs". But I don't know many Metal bands, which have been produced by label companies or other corporate entities. What makes it more interesting is that it has come out of Japan, which has produced some very good Metal bands in the past and lot of garbage corporate non metal music groups.

Anyway, the band started its performance with a good starting intro using Starwar style text and describing "how the gods of metal(Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth) wants to pass their torch to newer generation and that newer generation manifests itself as Baby Metal. They should go to Europe because all the road to rock leads to Europe". Well that was some tight marketing and packaging gimmick and I totally bought it. Everyone cheered and applauded when the band came on the stage, with musicians(drummer, guitarist and bassist) dressed in some kind of white Japanese clothes and the performers(singers and dancers) were dressed in small red and black frocks(or whatever the hell it was).

The band was not particularly bad, guitarist and drummer were tight and riffs were good. Later when these three girls started singing and dancing it was all a downhill ride for me. Not that they are bad singers, but it just doesn't fit the whole metal/brutal scene and seems like a terrible cocktail.  Meanwhile I initiated a new trend with some of my Scottish and Welsh buddies  of shouting "Metaruuu" at random times. To make shit more hilarious and ironic, they were moshing to the songs.
They performed following songs(courtesy setlist.fm)

1. Babymetal Death
2. Gimme Chocolate!!
3. Catch Me If You Can
4. Megitsune
5. Ijime Dame Zettai

 

At some point during performance they performed this chocolate song and all I can hear is "CHOCO-- CHOCO Letau!! chocoletau!!!!", which is my interpretation of their pronunciation. Another peculiar thing about the whole dance routine was they were making devils horns all wrong, it looked like they were making a shadow puppet sign for a deer. These girls took a break after 2-3 songs and then the musicians performed drum and guitar solos, which was a relief from the whole singing and dancing routine. They were fairly impressive lot. Later these girls came back and performed some other song which sounded like a record stuck in a tape recorder "ta ta ta ta ta.........", seriously that is all I could hear. The bunch was three girls I think two of them younger between 12-14 and older main singer was 14-16. I have heard somewhere when they get too old in J-pop world, the band continues with younger lot and older ones are fired. Seems like same fate might await these chicks in 2-3 years time.

The last gimmick they pulled out was requesting a WALL of DEATH using the same animated large screen display. I don't thing these girls could pull a request for a brutal Wall of Death directly since let's face it they are too KAWAII for that shit! Anywho, crowd was taking a piss, so there was a fucking WALL OF DEATH!!! who knew that would happen.
They ended happily after seeing the crowd response, not sure if they understood what was really going on. But I am happy that these kids were not treated badly as they could have in their first ever gig outside their home country, Metal crowd can be very difficult to please. The crowd dispersed with shits and giggles and there were few who were genuinely impressed and liked the whole thing. Each to their own.