“There are no borders when it comes to music”: The story of BABYMETAL’s breakthrough

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘culture shock’ as the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life or set of attitudes.

When audiences in the UK, and indeed, most places outside of Japan, were presented with (or confronted by) BABYMETAL, that strange feeling of disorientation ruled the roost. The newness of the unfamiliar was startling, but intoxicating. It didn’t take long for that oddball cocktail to start tasting rather sweet. A trip into the world of BABYMETAL is a weirdly interesting entry into the kingdom of elsewhere…

The band’s genesis is every bit as curious as their extravagant image and music. The outfit was ‘created’ by Japanese producer Key Kobayashi, better known as KOBAMETAL, who in 2010 pulled the three singing band members from all-female group Sakura Gakuin. The latter was an ‘idol group’ – essentially a collective of school age individuals who don’t just sing, but might dance, act and perform in sketches. Idol groups, beloved in Japan, are entertainment machines sculpted to fascinate and inspire young audiences.

KOBAMETAL’s idea was to fuse the idol group idea with metal, and he thought – correctly – that Sakura Gakuin’s 12-year-old Nakamoto Suzuka would be the perfect voice and persona to front such a thing. BABYMETAL was initially no more than a sub-unit of the parent outfit, its line-up rounded out with fellow members Kikuchi Moa and Mizuno Yui, who were even younger than Suzuka. The trio were granted suitably metallic stage names, Suzuka becoming SU-METAL, with Moa and Yui christened MOAMETAL and YUIMETAL respectively.

The band were to be backed by a masked collective of metal musicians, sometimes described as the Kami Band, if referred to at all. As time went on, they tended to be clad in zombie Halloween get-up, with even KOBAMETAL opting to remain largely anonymous, making most of his public appearances in a full body skeleton suit. The visual focus was pretty much entirely on the trio of singers.

The project was a distillation of KOBAMETAL’s vision, but it was something that the undeniably accomplished and determined SU-METAL, MOAMETAL and YUIMETAL rapidly grew into. It was a particularly notable thing given their young age (in those important early years, the trio had to balance shows with school work on a regular basis). Then there was the fact that they were almost discovering metal as they were making it.

“At first I had an image that metal music was a little bit on the scarier side,” MOAMETAL would later reflect. “But through BABYMETAL I’ve been able to really understand and realise how beautiful and amazing metal music is. For future generations, I want to be that role model to communicate that.”

Cognisant of his charges’ youth, KOBAMETAL said the band name was representative of a ‘newborn’ genre, something we hadn’t seen before. Still a part of Sakura Gakuin, BABYMETAL made their live debut on November 28, 2010, with a first song Doki Doki Morning appearing on a 2011 album credited to the parent group. The track, full of cheerleader zip, certainly had legs – still performing it years later SU-METAL said that singing it always “made me think of how far we have made it in our careers”.

More came as BABYMETAL tentatively laid foundations for what lay ahead; a single emerged, plus a song that tackled bullying, Ijime, Dame, Zettai (Bullying, No Good, Absolutely in English). Further videos, including one for the memorably titled Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!! also caught the attention, though all BABYMETAL matters were still seen as being part of, or a temporary diversion from, Sakura Gakuin.

The break came in 2013 when SU-METAL left junior high school and therefore had to ‘graduate’ from Sakura Gakuin as well. While this might ordinarily have brought the trio’s strange, part-time collusion of singing, dancing and headbanging to a halt, it was decided that BABYMETAL should continue. It became its own entity, the thing we know today.

The band also developed their own arcane mythology. Everything about them, we were to learn, was the result of the Fox God imposing its wishes and rules. The band’s look, music and place in society and among fans – all of these reflected the will of a higher power.

“Everything comes from the Fox God,” MOAMETAL would tell Kerrang!. Indeed, the stock phrase “only the Fox God knows” would become a useful method of bypassing awkward questions. With or without the vulpine deity, which has since developed a supporting cast of spirits, the outfit’s rising popularity in Japan meant the concept was too hot to simply drop.

Having already wowed their home nation’s Summer Sonic festival in 2012, the youngest act to ever perform there, the newly independent BABYMETAL starred at the event once again, the very next year. This time they appeared in Tokyo and Osaka, reportedly witnessed by members of Metallica, before they debuted at October 2013’s Loud Park metal festival. BABYMETAL, in their own right, were quickly becoming a big deal. Within a year they’d do something even more extraordinary: they’d break down barriers both international and cultural.

Despite their youth, BABYMETAL were starting to leave adult-sized footprints wherever they trod. Their popularity was snowballing. On March 1 and 2, 2014, shortly after dropping their self-titled debut in their homeland, the band headlined Tokyo’s auspicious Nippon Budokan arena. They played to some 20,000 fans over two nights – as well as using that stage to announce their first world tour. KOBAMETAL’s vision was coming to life, and BABYMETAL were making waves.

Those waves – part bludgeon, part caress – quickly became known as kawaii metal, an unlikely fusion of metal and J-pop that shouldn’t have worked but did. It might have fallen flat without such a likeably eccentric and enjoyably visual trio to front it. It could also have failed with less explosive sounds. KOBAMETAL perfectly fused an ability to complement their heroines’ silky talents with sonics that shook the ground like Godzilla himself. He would later explain that “while BABYMETAL receives inspiration from legendary artists, we don’t want to do the same [as them]. We want to make sure we pass down the beauty of metal music, but in a way that we feel metal music is all about.”

It was BABYMETAL’s very divergence that began to get international tongues wagging. Whether you considered yourself to be on board or not, it was fun to watch the band hurling party pink confetti at dreary traditionalists, those assured in backdated beliefs that things in metal must be a certain way. BABYMETAL were not that ‘certain way’. The album, now being noticed further afield, meant the outfit’s musical sting was only rivalled by the buzz it was creating.

All the previous singles were included, most of which had been hits back home, but significantly a thing called Gimme Chocolate!!, precocious sweet savagery with an internationally user-friendly title, was also there. Now, even in the west, those perhaps derailed previously by the band’s more Japan-specific content, had a vibe to feed off.

The music was banging, the visuals eye-popping, and the writing wasn’t daft – even though the group as a whole was ‘manufactured’ as Kerrang!’s otherwise positive 4/5 review conceded, the themes genuinely seemed to come from the three people that were delivering it. Reviewer Paul Travers described it as being “rock at its most bonkers and utterly brilliant”.

“Once you hear it,” he concluded, “you wonder why no-one’s ever done it before.”

MOAMETAL and YUIMETAL were both credited for contributions to Song 4, and while the remaining tracks were written by others, including KOBAMETAL, they dealt with themes like bullying (Ijime, Dame, Zettai), first gig experiences (Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!) and women who mask their emotions (Megitsune). The latter also contained reference to the ‘kitsune’ (fox) which in turn gave life to the band’s signature hand gesture, a cuter variation on metal’s traditional horns. Along with Gimme Chocolate!!’s mixture of lusty craving and post-treat guilt, these were themes readily identifiable to those both singing and listening to them. In other words, BABYMETAL were on to something.

Their UK breakthrough came just in time for their appearance at the 2014 iteration of Sonisphere, staged that July at Knebworth in Hertfordshire. Then seen as a rival or alternative to Download, bagging a slot on Sonisphere’s main Apollo stage meant potentially playing to 60,000 people. Initially scheduled to appear in the much smaller Bohemia tent, such was the impact of a fan-driven campaign, plus the now snowballing Gimme Chocolate!! effect, that they were swiftly upgraded to the larger platform.

Like many exposed to the band’s unprecedented kawaii metal fizz for the first time, Kerrang!’s review was a little nonplussed. “The band’s weird mix of death metal and mad pop, dance routines and bonkers costumes makes you feel like you’re still in a mad dream,” we stated. “Good? Bad? Not sure!” we mooted before observing that they made the pre-fame Ghost, who were on next, “look positively ordinary”.

Seemingly unstoppable, BABYMETAL were then asked to support no less a star than Lady Gaga on five of the flamboyant pop icon’s U.S. shows that August, and before the year was out BABYMETAL were back in the UK headlining London’s O2 Academy Brixton. At the latter they proffered further metal credentials by debuting Road Of Resistance, a track co-written with DragonForce guitarists Herman Li and Sam Totman.

They were back the following June, this time performing that very song as guests of the British power metal purists at Download. Although festival boss Andy Copping had expressed more than a little reluctance about the band, not wanting to book them at all, their appearance with DragonForce ticked all the right boxes.

Also in 2015, they bagged the Spirit Of Independence gong at the Kerrang! Awards. Seeming only slightly disoriented, the trio said they were looking forward to meeting ‘metal gods’ at the event, which they did – in the form of BMTH.

SU-METAL would describe working with other bands as both an honour and a constant learning experience.

“I’ve come to realise that it’s a band’s warm personality that makes people want to see their show for such a long time,” she opined. “I hope this is something we can achieve as BABYMETAL.”

They’d also pop in to hang out at the K! office in Covent Garden, before teaching one staffer how to dance backstage after their appearance at that summer’s Reading Festival.

It was all part of breaking out. Now they were here, BABYMETAL were embracing it all.

“I am constantly eager to know more about the world,” enthused MOAMETAL. “I believe that music has the power to connect people and bring joy. There are no borders when it comes to music. It creates endless possibilities.”

It is that sense of limitlessness and total disinterest in convention that contributed most to their early ascent. Maybe it was skilful management or maybe it was simply the will of the Fox God, but nothing now could dent their rocket-like trajectory. Ubiquitous, unique, unquenchable – BABYMETAL had arrived. The world didn’t quite know what had hit it.

This feature originally appeared in the special-edition Kerrang! Presents BABYMETAL magazine.

Read this next:

• How BABYMETAL broke boundaries and pioneered the kawaii metal genre
• Fantasy, foxes and flipping the script: Inside BABYMETAL’s extraordinary lore
• How BABYMETAL entered uncharted territory