Babymetal - The Other One (2023)

Country: Japan
Style: Kawaii Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 24 Mar 2023
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It almost seems surprising to say that this is a surprising album from Babymetal, because it's not a fresh expansion of their sound, as their previous album, 2019's Metal Galaxy, surely was, but more of a contraction and a re-focus on what they do best. For those not in the know, they play what they call "kawaii metal", which means the bizarre placement of cute JPop vocals and electronica over a crunchy and sometimes almost extreme metal backdrop. However, Metal Galaxy, a concept album that brought in sonic flavours and guest appearances from each of the countries in which the band has toured, stretched that template in all sorts of wild directions.

In comparison, this felt almost like an assault on a first listen. It's very loud, some of the knobs on the mixing desk surely turned up to eleven, and it's often very fast too. The only world music that I caught was on Metalizm, which has some Indian flavours, and there are no guest appearances that I could identify. It's Babymetal reinforcing that they play metal rather than global pop and finding their way back to basics. Oddly, the album both benefits and suffers from this approach. I wasn't at all sure on that first listen but it's grown on me with every subsequent time through.

Importantly, I think there are a few reasons for this. One is that there are only ten songs on offer instead of sixteen and they're all of a consistent sort of length. Only two songs sit outside a range between 3:23 and 4:18 and they all do much the same thing, with variations to keep it interesting. Those exceptions, by the way, are Time Wave, which extends to 4:50 because of a longer electronic intro, not hitting top gear until a minute of driving pop music in; and the opener, Metal Kingdom, a minute longer than Time Wave, partly because of a longer intro but mostly because it has an epic flavour to it.

Another is that almost everything feels like metal, with occasional dips into electronica. Last time out, I noted that "rarely do the songs seem to start out as metal" and that's just not the case here. Even when the electronic angle takes the fore, as it does on Time Wave and Light and Darkness, it isn't long before the metal takes back over. Only The Legend, which closes out with a more mellow outlook, down to the use of a saxophone, avoids that and it's still heavier than half of what was on Metal Galaxy.

Perhaps, most tantalisingly, Su-Metal, who sings lead, seems to be shifting away from the cuteness overdose of JPop to a more rock-based delivery. There's still a pop edge there, but there's also an overt use of power that's more typical of rock music. She belts here, even if it's a sweet belt. She's willing to soar and sustain, even in verses and especially in choruses. Most importantly, she does it all on Divine Attack -Shingeki-, which is the first Babymetal song on which she wrote all the lyrics. I would call her delivery entirely hers and she chose to go for power.

It's clearly one of the highlights, as is Metalizm, but the more I listen to this, the more it clicks into focus for me and the more individual tracks stand out to approach that pair at the top of the heap. Maya has a seriously driving riff and Mirror Mirror even grinds at points. Monochrome is quite the earworm and The Legend holds up at the end of the album, even though it's easily the softest song on offer. Talking of softer, I have to admit a fondness for the first minute of Time Wave that's clear pop music but catchy and powerful.

And so this is a surprising album, not because it doesn't sound like Babymetal but because it feels a lot closer to what Babymetal are than anything in a long while, consistently and emphatically. It also surprises because it does that while making the cute JPop side of the band fit a lot closer than anything on their previous album. There are points where I could see three kawaii girls dancing in synchronicity even without visuals, but Su-Metal's voice is much more natural and overt, without a lot of the digital manipulation done to it in the past. Autotune is not a big problem here, the intro to Believing notwithstanding.

I wonder how this is going to be received. From being underwhelmed on a first listen, I now think it may well be their best album yet.

Babymetal - Metal Galaxy (2019)

Country: Japan
Style: Kawaii Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 8 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It's rare that when a band conjures its genre out of thin air, it's actually more accurate that anything else we can come up with. Case in point: Japan's imaginative export du jour, Babymetal, who call themselves "kawaii metal". I honestly can't come up with anything better, especially on this, their third album, because it's all over the musical map.

At heart, as you probably know by now, it's heavy metal meets Jpop, a weird combination but at times a very good one. However, this album aims to mimic their journey bringing kawaii metal to all corners of the earth by bringing local music into their own, so it's often a sort of folk metal, as indeed a favourite song like their debut single, Megitsune, kind of was. When this is successful, it's fascinating. When it isn't, on the other hand, it's pretty awful and that's why I have to give it only a 6/10 rating.

It's hard to come up with any defining logic around which songs succeed and which don't, except that the worst heavily feature autotune and the best are the most international in flavour. I wouldn't have expected Pa Pa Ya!! to be one of my favourites, given that it features Thai rapper F. Hero, but it's a wonderful song. Once again, it's unlikely genres merging in a way that works but I can't explain why.

Shanti Shanti Shanti is easily my choice for the best song on the album. It delves into Indian music enough that it sounds like it began as a Bollywood song, but it leaps into both metal crunch and pop cuteness, mixing all three elements well. The middle features traditional Japanese melodies over Indian drums. I'd absolutely watch the Bollywood movie this came from.

Oh! Majinai does the same with what sounds like half Russian and half Celtic music. The guest vocalist is Joakim Brodén, the voice of Swedish power metal band Sabaton and he drives much of the song. It could be more than it is but it's still a lot of fun, much of it in the vocal shenanigans.

These two remind that, for all the power the musicians generate behind them, Babymetal are a vocal band. Many of the songs here are pop songs with added crunch. Da Da Dance is a rave with guitars, like a kawaii Rob Zombie. Rarely do the songs seem to start out as metal but add pop vocals. Elevator Girl is certainly one and it works a little better for it. At points, the guitars seem to make the singers go faster.

What surprises the most is how varied those vocals get, even if we focus on the Japanese girls rather than the guests. BxMxC is really interesting with its chiptune voice effects and other vocal acrobatics. Sadly, it utilises a lot of autotune, which makes the whole thing sound artificial and false. It became really hard to not skip songs like Brand New Day and ↑↓←→BBAB when listening through again. The former features Tim Henson and Scott LePage of American math rockers Polyphia and serves mostly as a reason not to look at what they sound like normally.

How the whole album doesn't end up as an unholy mess, I have no idea. To me, some of it does. Brand New Day, for example, is an overproduced mess that I just can't stand. Future Metal is nothing but an intro with autotune. Fasten your neckbrace, it tells us, before taking us into a rave with Da Da Dance. Sometimes it works, like In the Name Of, which is choral until the Brazilian steel drums take over in time for the ethnic death growls. I have zero idea where this ends up. Which parallel universe am I in?

Night Night Burn! is the epitome of this. It starts out as electronica meets neo-classical metal and stays that way until it doesn't. Cuban rhythms play behind staccato nu metal riffage before leaping onto centre stage. Was that the James Bond theme in there? It's all over the musical map but, again, it's immersive and enticing and fascinating.

I either really liked or really disliked the first dozen songs but was never bored for a second. The biggest problem the album has isn't that it fails to be all things for all people but because it forgets what it is. After those dozen songs, there are four more but they're instantly forgettable because a key element, that wild and insane imagination, is missing from them all.

I won't diss them because I went back later and listened only to those four songs, finding that they're decent enough on their own merits. The girls go extra cute on Shine and Arkadia is a solid melodic death metal song of the sort that Abba might have made had they formed a quarter of a century later in Gothenburg. It's just that they should have been issued as a separate EP rather than buried under a dozen wild and varied musical explorations.

What's especially interesting is that my son, who saw them live a couple of weeks ago, roughly agreed with my takes but didn't match entirely. There are songs that I didn't like at all that pushed the right buttons for him. And I think that's the key here. You're not likely to enjoy everything here but it has enough tracks that deleting the half you don't still leaves half an hour of stuff that you dig and which you absolutely won't hear anywhere else.