BABY METAL this, BABY METAL that, a photo with Slayer’s Kerry King and Gary Holt, Metalsucks and Metal Injection showcasing endorsements from every big Metal band on the planet, articles hating them, articles praising them, 5+ pages of forum posts, “invasion of the West”, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, THIS article, and so on and so forth.
Their second full length album METAL RESISTANCE is aptly named to reflect a global Metal scene that suddenly found itself on its knees, to be run over by these 3 Japanese girls:
Thing is, Metal music always passes through similar times of accepting newcomers who bring some much needed variety to the culture. A couple of examples would be Rap Metal and Opera Metal (Symphonic), both of which are still to this day a topic of “This is not Metal / Yes it is!”. However, both these genres slowly merged in the subculture, and the debate moved on to Metalcore and emos, and later on Djent. Along the way, some eclectic Metal music was also heavily criticized but still drew a large crowd, notably music which blended folk music, brass instruments, Jazz and others.
The big difference now is that it’s the social media era, hence the big names in the Metal community (the elders) can talk to the masses and endorse the phenomena under scrutiny, and since no one can doubt the legitimate Metalness of these living Metal legends, one has to automatically kneel and be stomped by the Mammoth that is BABY METAL.
There are 2 active Metal bands with the word “BABY” in their name (from metalunderground.com), it is simply a chemical combination that never worked before, until now … I guess. Thing is I listened to their second full length METAL RESISTANCE and while I did not hate it or find it irrelevant to Metal music, it didn’t strike me as a great record. The hype itself has gone deeper than the music itself, as the identity of Metal itself is being challenged here, and social media is fueling it.
I’ll end this therapy session with the following advice:
1- Listen to METAL RESISTANCE
2- Watch some live performance videos
3- Decide whether or not you like the band
4- Move the fuck on
