Twelve months-and-a-day after sealing themselves away from the world, BABYMETAL have completed their restoration and announced their imminent return from hiatus.
Unfortunately, it looks like restoration didn’t include refurbishment of the Yuibot.
Babymetal
For pages and posts that relate to Babymetal.
Of Foxes and Fools: BABYMETAL News + An April Fools Day Round-Up
Another Fox Day aka April Fools Day has come and gone and we are none the wiser for the experience. As followers of idol units who regularly pull inexplicably unbelievable things on any given day of the week, April Fools Day is always a bit confounding. I mean:
- Are RAY really releasing a chiptune single? (no)
- Is Especia really reuniting after 4 years for an anniversary show? (yes, they are)
- Is this group for real?
(I honestly don’t know)
BABYMETAL Going on Hiatus Maybe
Anyone who has followed BABYMETAL for more than one minute knows that the one thing they love more than coming up with crazy new merch is posting cryptic tweets. Yesterday, they dropped a doozy:
Sunday, October 10th, 2021…
Together with all 10 episodes of METAL RESISTANCE coming to a close,
the 10-year legend will be sealed from the world.Until that seal is broken, BABYMETAL will disappear from our sight.
Time is running out.
There is no eternity in God’s descent.— BABYMETAL (@BABYMETAL_JAPAN) August 3, 2021
BABYMETAL Unveil BxMxC MV, Best-Of Album and Other Elaborate Plans for their 10th Birthday
It all started simply enough. Around midnight Tokyo time, BABYMETAL dropped an MV for “BxMxC”, their nu-metal banger that was exclusively released as part of the domestic (Japan) version of METAL GALAXY almost one year ago today. While BABYMETAL have been feeding us performance videos on the regular, we have to go back almost two years to the release of “Starlight” for the group’s last true MV, and all the way back to 2016’s “KARATE” to see an MV featuring the members themselves. This made it a brutally refreshing departure to see SU-METAL literally spit fire in this Mortal Kombat meets 8 Mile mash-up.
“BxMxC” is now available digitally worldwide.
Shortly thereafter, they also released a BxMxC special edition t-shirt which sold out in about three seconds so don’t even bother searching for the link. But if you still feel an itch to spend money on BABYMETAL, they got you covered. Just a few hours later, they dropped the motherload: Continue reading
In Honor of BABYMETAL, a BABYMETAL Thing
So you’ve probably seen the news, that BABYMETAL, who through no fault of their own have had their entire reason for being (big-ass live shows) ripped out from under them, are going to release their very own version of a double-live gonzo album next week:
”LEGEND – METAL GALAXY” LIVE ALBUM will be digitally available worldwide on September 9th, 2020
pre-order, pre-add Now！ https://t.co/SFG2LyGc59#BABYMETAL #METALGALAXY pic.twitter.com/4oKmKJJx9t
— BABYMETAL (@BABYMETAL_JAPAN) September 2, 2020
This was already announced a while ago, Twitter-diving shows, but it’s new to me dammit!
Good. Great. Grand. Wonderful. This is very much a Weekender item. So why am I blogging a whole-ass post out for it? Because, starters, it’s been a minute since the last time we had good reason to post a BABYMETAL thing, and also because I have now listened to the previews and deemed them good, and because today is a very special day, my very own Fox Day if you will, as it is the sixth anniversary of my first BABYMETAL experience (it was “Megitsune”), which is almost as life-defining as the time I decided to strike up a conversation with the person to whom I am now engaged to be married and also very easy to remember because it’s my brother’s birthday. So in honor of the unofficial beginning of Maniac and the eventual establishment of ye olde website, I blog a BABYMETAL post. Continue reading
A Very Special Edition of the Mond– Tuesday Match Game
Hey, do you guys remember IRONBUNNY? I sure do, and even though I ultimately wasn’t moved to make them a proper Homicidols Big Deal, things changed when they popped up in the Western metal press:
Ironbunny, The New Babymetal, Unveil New Song “Infinite Mirror” https://t.co/jQHC0680UT pic.twitter.com/ke7l6i4qhZ
— MetalSucks (@metalsucks) December 16, 2019
I’ve had them on speed dial for the past week because I noticed on Twitter that they’d recorded an MV, which I took to be an almost dead certainty that we’d be getting that MV in due time, and sure enough it happened! It’s a good song, and what incredible timing, considering that I hadn’t had a chance to write up the latest BABYMETAL MV yet but still intended to do so — but would life really be best served with two separate posts about idol metal that has happened to connect to one degree or another in the West, or would things be much more fun than to smash those two things together into a single empty competition? You know the answer by now! Continue reading
My Appetite for “Metal Galaxy” Is Not Sated, Babymetal
You may have noticed yesterday that Babymetal — the literal reason for the season, the thing that brought me here, still capable of being the most powerful entity in the universe — dropped another video in the run-up to the impending release of the extremely-anticipated Metal Galaxy album next month. I thought about just tossing a post into the ether in response, but no, friends, the Official Policy of Homicidols Dot Com is that Babymetal is supreme for a reason, and when a thing is supreme and also one of the only reliable cornerstones of the Legends category that sorts our content, that thing deserves more than a hastily scribbled ZOMG reaction. Let’s do whole paragraphs instead!
So the song is “Shanti Shanti Shanti”, which by the title alone would give away a certain touchpoint with the subcontinent; if you’re still unfamiliar, though, and you’re either personally South Asian or as personally adjacent as yours truly, you may find yourself surprised at how few non-Babymetal tropes are actually employed.
BABYMETAL AWAKENS!! Announces 3rd Album Release Date, European Tour and More
On night one of BABYMETAL AWAKENS – The Sun Also Rises at Yokohama arena, KOBAMETAL woke up and realized he had forgotten to tell anyone when the group’s new album was being released. Shortly following Friday night’s show, he finally announced:
METAL GALAXY, BABYMETAL’s third album, will be released on October 11th 2019. This date coincides with their first-ever U.S arena show at the Forum in Los Angeles.
3rd アルバム『METAL GALAXY』発売決定DEATH！！
New Album "METAL GALAXY" Oct 11, 2019 Release!https://t.co/BVI2wsJBBK#BABYMETAL #METALGALAXY #newalbum #Oct11 pic.twitter.com/rpFY7vw95P
— BABYMETAL (@BABYMETAL_JAPAN) June 28, 2019
The 16-track album will come in at least seven flavors:
- Limited SUN version – (2CD / Analog size jacket) – ¥ 4,500
- Limited MOON edition – (2CD / Analog size jacket) – ¥ 4,500
- Limited edition – (2CD + DVD) – ¥ 4,200
- Normal edition – (2CD) – ¥ 3,500
- Analog version – (2Vinyl) – ¥ 5,000
- THE ONE Limited Edition- (2CD + DVD) – ¥ 9,000 + THE ONE fan club membership
- A transparent vinyl version has also popped up on the English language store.
And Now Babymetal Is Officially Back
Now that it’s completely official, the team of moralists and ethics professors here at Homicidols Dot Com can finally talk out loud and with full candor about the second single dribbled out by Babymetal in the lead-up to their first album in three years. Yeah, we usually don’t care all that much about leaks (especially not “leaks”) in a moral sense — it’s more a “let’s see this the way it’s meant to be seen maybe” thing — but in this case it felt appropriate to hold up a minute and let the chips fall.
It’s been a weird 18 months for Babymetal fans, but as if there were any doubt after “Elevator Girl”, this latest one is as definitive and clear a statement as you’ll get that the greatest show on earth is ready to smash some skulls in as fun a way as possible:
You can do the buy/stream thing here: Continue reading
We Over-Analyze Things: BABYMETAL | “Elevator Girl”
It was about time BABYMETAL paid homage to David Bowie. I mean, while Bowie crushed just about every pop genre on the planet except Heavy Metal, he was largely responsible for the early creation of Glam Rock.
- Without Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, we have no KISS.
- Without KISS to influence a young Yoshiki, we have no X Japan.
- With no X Japan, we have no BABYMETAL.
So when BABYMETAL’s new single, “Elevator Girl”, opens by directly channeling the piano riff from Bowie’s early 80s classic, “Modern Love”, the circle of life seems, in some ways, complete. In truth, the direct influence on this single is probably less Bowie’s soul and groove-flavored New Wave, and more the J-Pop fusion of acid jazz, funk and techno that coalesced around the same time period into the broad City Pop genre. City Pop has seen a lot of attention lately with interest from Vaporwave aesthetes, YouTube channels streaming curated City Pop feeds 24-7, and it’s own brief “I didn’t know [insert name here] put out a City Pop album” meme.
City Pop is also heavily influencing a number of current groups in the alternative idol world including early album-of-the-year contenders Atarashii Gakkou No Leaders, GuGu-LuLu and the fledgling OWA Yoru.
(This is a lot of words so far just to talk about a three-minute song. What we are seeing here is an unfortunate side effect when a group as musically fascinating as BABYMETAL only releases three pieces of new material in a twelve-month span. In the absence of an “Elevator Girl” MV to talk about, let’s continue the over-analysis:) Continue reading
