A Review of the Album "Metal Resistance" by Japan’s Babymetal

Japan’s pop, thrash, and industrial metal band Babymetal have taken the world by storm since about 2012 or so and they have shown that not only can a female fronted band perform but these girls can sing! "Metal Resistance" was released on March 29, 2016 and it is the band’s second full length studio album.

The album has a great mix of styles ranging from power metal style to industrial metal that can be seen on the album called Cybergore from Spanish death metal band Avulsed. I wonder if David Sanchez Gonzalez ever heard of Babymetal. If he has, he might like the approach that this band uses.

Metal Resistance immediately saw success in Japan as it reached #2 on the Oricon Music Charts and has since sold 100,000 copies in Japan. The album also reached #39 on the US Billboard 200 charts and this marked the highest ranking for a Japanese artist since Kyu Sakamoto back in 1963! What US band other than Metallica can really even compare to Babymetal and even then, they don’t have the kind of musical variety that I hear on Metal Resistance. Even Linkin Park should be impressed by these girls that started singing professionally since they were in elementary school!

The song GJ sounds like a song on the Lacuna Coil album Karmacode. It seems that universal karma has brought us one of the best heavy metal bands in the world in the late 2010’s. It may have been the time for Babymetal to thrive and show the world what they can do. This would end up being the last full length album for Yui Mizuno to take part in as she would end up having to leave the band because of health issues. My thoughts, prayers, and well wishes are with Yui and her family. Babymetal has gotten so well known that they have toured in the United States. One user on YouTube Yomi Nishijama commented about Babymetal saying: “Hands down. Bar none. Best Japanese band ever, ever and possibly the world,” (Nishijama, 2019). Babymetal may just be Japan’s best heavy metal band with the disbandment of other awesome bands such as Serpent and Shadow. The first song called Road of Resistance has a power metal kind of start so some of you may be wondering what this band is doing experimenting with power metal. Then comes the industrial influenced song Karate, the first song that I heard from this album. Are there some people that want to insist that there are no good heavy metal bands in Japan? Sadly, there are people out there that are quick to point out that Japanese metal sucks. Well, I’m here to say that not only does Japanese metal not suck, but Japan is the best Asian nation for this genre. It is just that these bands aren’t really marketed much outside the country so that’s why people don’t know about Japanese metal.

Amore starts out with some nice singing by Suzuka (Su-Metal) as it sounds like something from Italian power metal band Labyrinth with the thundering style of drums and melodies. Meta Taro sounds like Viking Metal, the kind we would hear from Finland’s Ensiferum as there is a brief yet definite keyboard part in this song.

Jon Hadusek of the website called Consequences of Sound remarks that “It’s a bizarre sound coming from a bizarre band: super catchy J-pop, brutal tech-death rhythms, and three pop stars backed by a bunch of virtuoso shredders,” (Hadusek, 2016). I would not say that the band’s sound is bizarre but rather it is more accurate to say that other than the band Ladybaby, Babymetal are the only other Japanese metal band that fuses J POP with heavy metal.

I would venture to guess that some of you might even listen to this album after you come home from work but Babymetal in spite of their name provide fans with heavy metal that is exotic, exciting, and in some cases catchy as well. No Rain, No Rainbow features some piano play and that further adds to the creativity of this group. Tales of the Destinies starts with this sort of progressive metal approach that you would hear from bands such as Dream Theater. If the group’s self-titled album leaves you in awe, Metal Resistance may be a sort of unusual album for you to get used to but give it a chance and this album will leave you impressed regardless. The strongest songs in Metal Resistance are many including Karate, Amore, No, Rain, No Rainbow, and The One.

References

Hadusek, J. (2016, April 6). BABYMETAL – METAL RESISTANCE. Retrieved from Consequences Of Sound: https://consequenceofsound.net/2016/04/album-review-babymetal-metal-resistance/

Nishijama, Y. (2019, February).