oh man...I was getting into Behemoth when all of that Nu-Metal stuff was raging, back when Behemoth was considered extreme...and can not stand baby metal. To me, it is a joke that I don't want to be a part of
The first time I saw Baby Metal was when they came out some 12 years ago, back then I also thought "What kind of joke is this, how dare someone make fun of my religion!" (metal being my religion) "What do you mean you people?" So I never gave them a chance, 10 years later I was deployed in Dubai and locked in my hotel room because of Covid restrictions and got to see the birth of YouTube reaction channels, which at the time it was entertaining to watch because it was like reliving the first time you heard a band and some of them were quite good at describing all the things they were discovering on their supposed first listen. One of those reaction channels reacted to Baby Metal... the video was a live in concert performance where they had a statue in the background (reminiscent of the And Justice For All Tour). The bass drum was also very much the basss drum from One, they were chanting what sounded to me like Death, Death, (they were saying Des which means something else in Japanese), the girl singing gets crucified, and the other girls place a neck brace on her... The music is metal as F*&K so I was intrigued, I had to know more.
I found out that:
1 Well, I knew this Japanese are NOT catholic so they don't pray to the same god so the virgin thing(the big ass statue) and her getting crucified is not offensive to them.
2 The neck brace is in honor of the drummer from the band X-Japan who injured his neck (permanently) by headbanging too hard so now he has to wear a neck brace. This also lead to them writing the song Headbanger or how they say it Hendoba... because Japanese how a hard time pronouncing the letter R too.
3 When the girls introduce themselves during the song they cross their arms in an x, also to shout out to X-Japan.
4 The band both Japanese and American versions of are all phenomenal musicians, they have to be able to play all those metal genres flawlessly and the smart thing that their management has done is to request famous bands to "collaborate" with Baby Metal so basically write them a song and the girls sing it and dance to it. (The band then must be able to play at that level for example Polyphia and Dragon Force both have "collaborated" with them).
Yes it is a gimmick but it works well. it is still metal (or at least those first 2 albums were metal, the new one is more pop with a splash of 9 string guitar) ESP (Japanese guitar maker ) made a 9 string ESP Baby Metal Edition guitar:
