maandag 15 september 2014

Confessions of a BABYMETAL Convert

This piece is written in English for the benefit of any non-Dutch speaking Reditters.
It's quite astounding really, how much I've grown to love BABYMETAL over the past few weeks. It is something I never thought I'd give a crap about. A J-pop group doing heavy metal? Don't be absurd! Yet here I am, writing this piece. How could this have happened?

At one time I was a typical music snob. My main sources of information about music were Pitchfork and magazines like Oor. My favourite band was Radiohead. I had very little interest in metal music, which I felt put way too much emphasis on technical musicianship instead of genuine creativity. Still, there was some metal I enjoyed, something I couldn't say about J-pop. In fact, I would've been hard pressed to find a J-pop song that I could stand to listen to for more than a minute at a time. I imagined this was how it was always going to be.

Then it happened. A well meaning youtuber put a clip of BABYMETAL at the end of one of his videos (the legend "z" rendition of Headbanger, as I later found out). I must admit I was intrigued right away, though it took me a while to investigate further. One thing the reader mustn't think of me is that I'm the kind of person who looks down on Japanophiles. In fact, I've had some interest in the country myself for quite a while. I'm a dedicated history fan you see, and the second half of the nineteenth century in Japan ranks as one of the most interesting periods in history in my opinion. Plus the endless stream of media coming from that country has made it so that the look and feel of suburban Tokyo are probably more familiar to me now than, say, those of atypical Dutch cities like Arnhem or Maastricht. So this strange new group I had encountered seemed like just one more example of the exotic weirdness that country had so richly provided me with since my childhood.

So, after some time had passed, I decided to give their album a listen. My first reaction was one of surprise. The reader has to understand that at this point I knew absolutely nothing about the group. I, for instance, was confused as to why in the first track only the vocalists were introduced and not the rest of the band. It was weird to be sure, but after getting over the initial shock and listening to the entire album twice I found myself enjoying it. For a long time time I pondered over the reason for my sudden interest in music I should, by all rights, hate. Finally it hit me: how many times have I not looked at all those super serious metal bands shouting and screeching with ugly sounding guitar noise underneath it, only to turn my head and plug my ears. How great wouldn't it have been if three teenage girls suddenly started prancing around the stage and make the whole thing seem ridiculous? Or, to look at it from the other side, wouldn't it be amazing to watch one of those unbearably saccharin J-pop music videos and suddenly have a loud metal band start playing in the background? It's such an unlikely combination, yet they offset each other so well, making for such a perfect fit that it's almost surprising nothing like this has been tried before, though admittedly it would take some sort of mad genius to come up with this.

I read a comment a while back complaining that BABYMETAL is nothing more than "metal for hipsters", which I guess could be true. I certainly got my share of ironic enjoyment out of them initially. But if that was the end of the story I wouldn't be writing this. As I listened to the album over and over again something happened. I started to genuinely love it. I started to love it like I was discovering my favourite bands again for the first time. Listening to BABYMETAL the album gave me the tingling sensation that triggered flashbacks to hearing for the first time albums like Modern Life Is Rubbish, OK Computer or In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. That sensation of knowing you're hearing something completely new and fresh and awesome!

Needles to say I was hooked in no time. Only problem was that at this moment BABYMETAL only has one album out. When I got this into an act in the past they usually already had a few records under their belt. I would first listen the hell out of one album and when that got stale I'd move on to the next one and later return to the first one. That way I could keep rotating until I'd heard all their albums about a million times each, at which point I'd move on to looking up facts about them on the internet to fill the void. But with only one album at my disposal and thus nothing to move on or go back to, I was reduced to surfing the web within less than a week. That's when I found the BABYMETAL subreddit and made the discovery that I'd only just missed them when they performed in Europe. That was also when I found a lot of concert footage which made me appreciate them on a different level yet again. To see a mere sixteen year old girl command a crowd of forty thousand metalheads and compel them to sing along to sweet and catchy pop music warms my heart. But more than that, it's as if the heavy music on the background has pulled these girls out of the bubble world made of sugar and innocence that these Japanese idols seem to exist in and has allowed their natural charm to shine through. Lead singer Suzuka Nakamato certainly exudes tons of charisma when she's on stage, like Kurt Cobain when he had a good day, only different. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I'm honestly surprised by how much I liked watching their live performances.

As if that wasn't enough, BABYMETAL have also rekindled my passion for music in a way I never thought possible. I hadn't even noticed it starting to fade! While writing this I listened to the entirety of Physical Graffiti, something I hadn't done in at least four years. It's one of several records I used to listen to which I've been revisiting lately, only to fall in love with them all over again. I don't remember music ever having that kind of impact on me and I'm truly grateful.

Declaring BABYMETAL to be my new favourite act would be going too far, but they've hit bullseye with me to be sure. I'm curious to see how they'll hold up, what their next album will sound like (though we'll probably see lots of singles from them first), how my thoughts on them will be in, say, two years time. I doubt they will ever surpass Radiohead in my mind though, mainly because I'd be lying if I said I didn't resent the fact everything about them is so bloody fabricated. Despite all the material I've seen on the subreddit, all the photos, interviews and "biographies", I still have no idea who Suzuka Nakamato, Yui Mizuno and Moa Kikuchi really are. Still, nothing is impossible, if anything the last few weeks have certainly proven that!