Babymetal – Metal Galaxy

Babymetal

Nine years into the fold, third album, first without Yuimetal. Where are we at with Babymetal? Well. Basically, the thing that was bangingest about the earlier stuff was that it was an astonishing mess. Stock metal riffs, abrupt major keys, hoover synths, super cutesy choruses and children way too young to have the slightest idea what they were up to.

The first album was one of those rare moments of being absolutely “pop industry” — for all the cynicism that entails, it was excessively brilliant, with its ska breakdowns, big hairy metal-ness, rapping and very classic choruses, all sort of clinging onto the all-in-the-red pop-ness of J-pop. The second album started to look a bit more like a brand, less like rushedly writing an album around a one-off-the-wrist idea. There was still the fuck-my-old-face astonishing Atari Teenage Riot meets J-pop of “Awadama Fever”, but there was definitely this idea that Babymetal is a band of metally riffs, heavy production and J-pop choruses.

Now we get to this album, Metal Galaxy. Well. It’s still good. Let’s not over-egg that, um, egg. There’s still plenty of ridiculous mess. “Shanti Shanti Shanti'”s quasi-Carnaticisms, part-yodels and stomping metal riffery is still faintly preposterous. But it’s so much closer to a world of pop-metal rather than pop juxtaposed with metal. It’s all that much more integral. It all makes sense, in brand terms.

The metal community, in part at least, very much took Babymetal to heart. And not to be naïve about it — Babymetal aren’t the rags-to-riches story of an indolent dreamer. They’re absolutely industry. So the problem is that the metal industry is masses less imaginative than the pop industry. Somewhere along the line, someone’s dialled down the kawaii, dialled up the metal, sold the hoover synths, and decided that guest spots by industry luminaries doing fucking metallish quasi-sea shanties is “hilarious”.

This all hangs together. There’s a minimum of moments that make you go, “oh that is fucking ridiculous”. “Night Night Burn!” might have a bunch of parts and a kind of bossanova extended bit, but it’s all very thoroughly composed. It’s not a jolt of juxtaposition, it’s all smooth surfaces and “clever”. I’ve always had a problem with discontinuous music — stand up hack Mike Patton — as a dearth of compositional integrity. Babymetal were always way more ridiculous and fun than that kind of sneering satire of jump-cut music. The problem now is that it’s all just so “this is what metallers will like” — “In The Name Of” is four minutes and thirty-one seconds of legitimate actual bloody metal that sounds like metal, and doesn’t have any (Babymetal) vocals.

Fundamentally, Metal Galaxy isn’t a bad record, it’s just listed in a fairly disappointing direction. Rather than the earlier efforts, which felt like emasculating the great beard bore that is metal, this is placating that world. They’re a feature of metal line-ups as much as whatever hack princes are popular there, probably still Metallica. They’re still, fundamentally, necessary for that world — fuck knows there’s a dearth of fun, good outfits, women and major keys there. It’s just that this record’s substantially less fun, less shocking and way, way less pop than previously.

Still keen to see them live, still fond of them massively, just going to say that previous albums — and particularly the debut — were a sight more necessary for the pop world and a way more of dig in the ribs than a pat on the back for the metal one.

-Kev Nickells-