The Babyklok Tour

[dorchadas]

Brütal.

A few months ago sashagee got really into Babymetal. She was playing their songs all the time in the house, having little dance parties with Laila, and then she learned that they were coming to Chicago along with Dethklok. I bought her tickets as a Mothers' Day present and last night was the concert.

The opening act was Jason Richardson, who I had never heard of before (I'm out of the loop) but is apparently a famous metal guitarist? And his guitar work was extremely good! He came out with no introduction, playing guitar over some recorded backing drums and bass, and it was fantastic--the kind of thing that once would have been a hard mode Guitar Hero track. Sparrow was sashagee's favorite song--that's Richardson in the red coat there playing guitar--and is a good summary of how his music sounded. He was wearing the same red coat on stage last night.

Unfortunately, his stage presence was terrible. At a metal concert, you expect the performers to have an attitude and get in your face (metaphorically), but Richardson was more like a new act at a comedy club. He made some self-deprecating jokes, trailed off a couple times, and then launched into more excellent guitar work. Well, there's a reason he's a guitarist and not a singer.

Also, Dethklok was there.

When Dethklok was done, the stagehands took almost thirty minutes to set up the stage, all while the temperature got warmer and warmer and the crowd got dense and denser. At the end, the logo flashed on screen, the announcer said the pitch, and Babymetal appeared:

I absolutely was not expecting a heavy metal cover of "Sōran Bushi," the traditional Japanese folk song. I even found a comment on a reddit people where people were like "Dokkoisho? What are they saying? Is that like Ganbare?" ( "Dokkoisho" means basically "heave-ho!"--"Sōran Bushi" is a sea shanty).

I knew very little about Babymetal going in, other than the memes and that one picture of them with Rob Zombie. Being metal lyrics, even when sashagee played them repeatedly I couldn't understand anything they were saying. That wasn't any different this time, but a lot of the metal I listen to is symphonic metal so I was used to the lone female voice floating above a sea of electric guitars and drums. But I was not expecting all the movement--I only listened to the songs that sashagee played, I didn't look up any Youtube info, I didn't read about their performances, nothing, so I had no idea that they had routines to fit the songs.

On the Metali Youtube video, there's a comment that reads:

日本の祭りの息を揃える掛け声や踊り、独特な歌舞伎の発声、言い回しなどの日化を取り入れて、ここまでのメタルエンターテイメントに仕上げるのはBABYMETALだけであり、唯一無二のオリジナリティーだと言える。最高傑作と言っても良いのではと思う。
"Babymetal is the only one in the world of metal music who includes these expressions so characteristic of Japanese culture, the sounds of encouragement and common calls at festivals and the uniqueness of kabuki. You could definitely say that they're totally original and their work is a masterpiece."

They're right. I never would have thought "You know what heavy metal needs? Jpop dance routines!" but Babymetal did and that's why people love them so much.

They performed for about an hour and then left the stage, and there was no encore. sashagee wasn't feeling that well with the heat and the standing, so we went straight home and she went straight to bed. But she got her Babymetal t-shirt with the fox masks on it--the same masks that the guitarists and drummer were wearing--which is what she really wanted.

According to wikipedia, "Before the formation of this club, none of the three members [of Babymetal] knew what heavy metal was." Well, they figured it out.