Somehow, it’s been 15 years already. Though they don’t look backward, it also didn’t go unnoticed by BABYMETAL as they made their new album, METAL FORTH. Now a trio again following the induction of MOMOMETAL, and with a cast of mates on board, it’s their most ambitious work yet. It’s also the one that made them re-assess who they are, and realise quite how big their universe is…
A short while ago, BABYMETAL had something of a realisation. Actually, an almost existential one. They began to notice the difference between then and now.
A decade-and-a-half into their cosmic journey, such things are likely to happen. Time and experience will leave their mark on you, shaping you with their weft and warp. Just as you no longer fit into a pair of old shoes as you grow up, having surpassed them in both size and shape, it began to occur to SU-METAL that things that were once so important to them were now possibly holding them back.
In terms of how they saw themselves, and understood what BABYMETAL is, anyway. In all other respects, there are battleships easier to sink.
Having sealed themselves off from the world for a year in 2021, following their mammoth 10-year anniversary celebrations, in October 2022 they announced that they would return with new music. When it was released the following March, THE OTHER ONE (technically their fourth album, though canonically not counted as such) was confirmation that BABYMETAL could, and would, not be stopped.
Which was good stuff, as this was exactly what some people were reckoning. Ten years, they opined, would be a handy point at which to end things for the not-babies-anymore band. Especially since three had become two, following the departure of YUIMETAL in 2018. They’d done METAL GALAXY the following year as a duo – and great it was, too – but from the outside, the expectation was to call the job a good ’un and vanish into the stars as mysteriously and suddenly as they’d appeared from them.
As it turned out, BABYMETAL were having none of it. Disrupted though the usual order of things had been, it was fine. The album, a concept that traversed no fewer than 10 parallel universes, was strong, confident, bonkers. It saw SU-METAL authoring the lyrics to a song alone for the first time (Divine Attack (Shingeki)).
Final mission? No way: it was an expert exercise in being able to navigate BABYMETAL’s celestial planes of existence at a pace beyond lightspeed.
But that was just it. THE OTHER ONE was SU-METAL and MOAMETAL roaring back, re-establishing themselves. It was also, with all its inter-dimensional intent, the biggest, boldest, fastest, loudest version of BABYMETAL yet. Where once this had been enough, the question came: what now?
“At first, we really wanted people to recognise not just our looks, but our music, and to understand that we take both music and metal seriously. That’s what kept us going,” explains SU-METAL today. “But over time, we realised that while we are metal, we’re also something beyond metal.”
It’s this phrase that inspired the apt title of BABYMETAL’s new album METAL FORTH. Now having sailed past their 15-year anniversary, and with MOMOMETAL becoming a full-time member of the crew in 2023 (having been aboard since 2019 for touring), BABYMETAL are, indeed, ready to boldly go where they’ve never been before – including a recent sold-out night at The O2 in London, the first Japanese artist to do so. The impact of being pulled into their mad musical world for the first time can never be repeated, but it does nonetheless go somewhere beyond. Beyond metal. Beyond expectation. Beyond their own frontiers.
“We want to take the music we’ve built so far and keep challenging ourselves by exploring even more diverse genres,” says MOMOMETAL. “We created this album with the desire to break new ground.”
And how. METAL FORTH sees them going all over the place – up, down, left, right, fast, slow, hyperdrive – where the results have the BABYMETAL effect, but take a much more grandiose road to get there. There’s guests aplenty, one on almost every track, all very different but kindred spirits in their own way, adding their individual fistfuls of space dust: Jordan Fish, Poppy, Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante, Bloodywood, Tom Morello. One might call it a musical buffet, but it’s so much more than that, and less conventional and civilised – it’s more of a sonic food fight. In space.
What does it all mean? SU-METAL has a blunt but inarguable answer.
“We’re simply BABYMETAL.”
Which isn’t actually that simple. Even with the Fox God having drawn up and released a Legend Map (unveiled from the heavens by the dieu renard, without apparent irony, on April 1) outlining the album release and shows, there’s not much given away. As a piece of cartography, it’s functionally useful, but for anything deeper it’s like trying to divine the motives within a scale drawing of a motorway. If BABYMETAL are his conduits on Earth, even they seem to only get the essentials from him.
But, as with Sleep Token and, at one point, Ghost, being part of the ‘say less’ crowd continues to be key in BABYMETAL’s enigmatic charm. In the early days, this could be put down to a language barrier – Kerrang! once spent several hours interviewing SU-METAL, YUIMETAL and MOAMETAL face-to-face via a translator – but there’s something useful in all this. Few artists manage to hold a spotlight so fully without it ever shining its beam on anything they don’t want it to see. Even asking things direct is simply not answered – in the politest way, we might add – which only makes you wonder even more.
What they do put out, however, is fascinating, all excitement and more-is-more big thinking. The O2 show was off the chain, with its giant production and more fire than anyone normal would have thought to put onstage. The video for the Jordan Fish-produced from me to u sees the band and Poppy playing in a sci-fi universe – in a neon-lit TRON-like street, made up of green particles, atop a skyscraper as a massive demon does his diabolic, demony thing behind them.
For RATATATA, the three of them are throwing a hyperreal party, having a whale of a time, before the door gets kicked in and Electric Callboy arrive, decked out like retro-futuristic disco cops. Ludicrous? Yes. Intentionally terrible acting? Absolument. Awesome? Duh.
Both show the doors that can be unlocked – or, indeed, blasted open – through collaboration, to make BABYMETAL’s domain bigger, to take them beyond metal.
“On this album we collaborated with various artists. Every time we exchanged a track [with one another], each artists’ colour was added,” explains SU-METAL. “I enjoyed the process – each of the artists had their own way of doing things.”
As do BABYMETAL. Part of their own process takes in the challenge of creation, of trying to expand beyond what they’ve already done. With such a large palette to play with, the possibilities weren’t hard to see once they started working.
“New songs are an invitation of new challenges for me,” SU-METAL continues. “This will expand our potential, so I am always excited to record. This time was no exception. I look forward to people hearing the various voices and expressions that I have tried.”
For MOAMETAL, large though the mountain to climb may have been, “The feeling of having fun was more outweighed than how hard it was. Because the songs weren’t just ours, it took more time than usual to complete them. We valued the time spent in discussion [with other artists] and carefully worked on the songs until we both felt they were right. That’s why this album became very special.”
One song they highlight as an example of how working so closely with other artists took them to places even the Fox God wasn’t pointing them to is Sunset Kiss. With its stuttering pop beat, there’s an element of their old mate Lady Gaga to it. SU-METAL says that it wasn’t until Polyphia’s Tim Henson and Scott LePage sent back their ideas that the whole thing clicked into place.
“We exchanged the demo many times throughout the process,” she reveals. “There was a song that evoked and changed feelings as we kept exchanging demos. When we first worked on Sunset Kiss, I couldn’t quite grasp the song. But after adding Polyphia’s guitar riff, I could catch the rhythm and we ended up changing a major part of the melody line. Their guitar riffs led us to complete the song. The singing part was a new challenge for me but thanks to them it went very smoothly.”
This didn’t just help shake up their own creative juices. It also offered BABYMETAL a unique opportunity to better understand how other people view them and what they do. Each collaboration turned into a window, seeing themselves from another’s perspective through the music they were being offered by others, seeing what their collaborators came up with as the missing piece of what they were making.
“By creating songs with various artists, we learned how they viewed and interpreted BABYMETAL,” shares MOAMETAL. “It became a great opportunity to learn how they perceive us. And the collaborations with all the musicians who lead the metal scene was thrilling.”
There’s a lot of them, and some of the connections run deep. Of the team-up with Poppy and Jordan Fish on from me to u, MOAMETAL calls her collaborators “the people who truly understand who we are.
“Because of their deep understanding, we could make the updated kawaii metal song. I love the track so much! We toured Europe with Poppy. I still cannot believe the intense death-voice coming from someone that cute!”
Elsewhere, Courtney LaPlante and Spiritbox turn My Queen from a chuggy, industrial stomper (with a massive chorus) into something more visceral when she tears through its breakdown. On the rhythmic danceable METALI!!, meanwhile, Rage Against The Machine guitar legend Tom Morello adds his usual flair and weird soloing to make something completely unlike what you’ve heard from BABYMETAL before, while still being firmly them.
It’s a similar story for Kon! Kon!, the song done with current tourmates Bloodywood. Both bands see the hook-up as a way to cross over into one another’s audience.
“We’re currently touring with them in the U.S, and they amaze me every day with their sincerity,” says MOAMETAL. “They’re full of curiosity, incredibly sincere, and on top of that, they’re truly hardworking. I’m grateful that, thanks to Bloodywood, BABYMETAL is being introduced to so many new people.”
By this time, MOAMETAL’s on a roll, enthusing about it all.
“The album is filled with various collaborations, so one more song,” she insists. “Lastly, I would like to talk about Song 3, which we made with Slaughter To Prevail. I love their sense of humour, and they are thoughtful and kind. Alex [Terrible], the vocalist, might seem intimidating with his wild death growls and even hanging out with bears, but he’s actually very kind and always takes time to listen to the three of us. All the members truly care for one another, and I think that’s really cool. They stopped by our U.S. show and performed that night. I miss them already!”
This forward thrust also highlights another truth about BABYMETAL: that they’re not ones for looking backward. Musically, this is a given, particularly for a band like theirs where there isn’t a naive, innocent, garage-born root to look back to in times of creative need. Their very first steps were bombastic and OTT. The only way has been one of expansion and adventure.
But they also just don’t dwell on the past. There’s no answer when asked if SU-METAL and MOAMETAL wondered if there was any jeopardy about the band’s future at any point. Ask if METAL FORTH was an easier album to make than its predecessor, having been created in less of a time of change, and it’s the same story. New entrant MOMOMETAL doesn’t give much away on how it felt to be fully drafted in, but does say that, “I was truly blown away when I saw so many people at The O2 show. Thinking that many people came to see our performance makes me so emotional. That motivated me to work even harder.”
Again, this is all part of the intrigue. And BABYMETAL have no need to keep an eye on the rear-view mirror. Not when the future is so bright and exciting. It’s apt, then, that when MOAMETAL eventually does reflect on the fact that METAL FORTH is coming after being a band for 15 years – which, truthfully, even the Fox God couldn’t have seen coming – she does so in the context of now, that BABYMETAL is still her life, and that it is still strong, growing.
“Now that I think about these 15 years… I really put in so much effort and worked so hard (laughs). Despite everything we’ve been through, I’m grateful and relieved that BABYMETAL is still standing strong.”
As a life, it’s not been a bad one. MOAMETAL thinks the same.
“When we first formed the group, I never expected to live as MOAMETAL this long,” she agrees. “There are times that I just wanted to give up and moments I just wanted to run away, but the thought that the team I love may fall apart if I walk away kept me going.
“Before I knew it, I was doing everything I could to protect BABYMETAL,” she adds. “SU-METAL loves singing so much. I wanted to save her place to sing, or rather I felt I had to. That responsibility kept me going as BABYMETAL.”
It’s when they talk like this that emotion and realness finally comes into the picture. The very essence of BABYMETAL remains dear to them. The music, the fans, and each other clearly matter greatly.
Discussing last year’s Download Festival set – during which a storm warning forced the band to exit the stage without announcement, before an almighty deluge soaked the site with biblical rain for five minutes, before suddenly stopping and the band returned to pick up as if nothing had happened – the concern is that fans who had got drenched didn’t get enough bang for their buck.
“More than anything, I felt so sorry for the audience who had been waiting,” says MOAMETAL. “We can’t blame anybody, but there may be a genius who brings rain on our team, so it’s the genius’ fault! I can laugh about it now but I was nothing but sad back then. I wish the audience could enjoy our music more. I wish I could see the audience’s faces more. There wasn’t enough time. So I want to go back there to perform. I will work hard to be invited back to the festival!”
And surely they will. BABYMETAL are now in uncharted territory. As they say themselves, they didn’t imagine they’d be still living as their onstage alter-egos at this point. But that’s rock’n’roll. You can’t plan it, even the Fox God can’t control it, so the best and most exciting move is to say ‘Fox it’ and hang on to see wherever it takes you.
The Legend Map only goes up to January. Confirmed dates so far reach November, when they play in Mexico City. Whatever they’ve got planned for the last piece of this particular quest – including a ‘Special Arena Show In Japan’ – will be something truly extraordinary. It’ll have to be, given that they’ve already done a residency at the legendary Nippon Budokan.
And that’s where BABYMETAL are headed. Not just somewhere special, but always into the future. As long as their shift has been, it’s also been a rewarding one.
“It’s never easy to keep doing something for a long time,” reflects MOAMETAL. “I am very happy that these 15 years have been filled with love from the fans. I have wanted to quit, but I continue to meet people I love because I kept going. That truly makes me feel I am so lucky to be BABYMETAL from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for making me live as MOAMETAL!”
Get ready for blast-off. Where we’re going, we probably don’t need roads. Now, go forth, for Fox’s sake, in the name of metal. There’s no telling what’s next. Good…
METAL FORTH is out now via Capitol. This interview originally appeared in the special-edition Kerrang! Presents BABYMETAL magazine.
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