BABYMETAL Vinyl & CDs

Review: Tokyo kawaii metal trio BABYMETAL may seem like a joke gone too far but when you're an all-girl J-pop metal group who are now the first Japanese artists to ever sell out London's 02 arena, it's hard to refute or ignore their staying power. Returning with the follow up to 2023's The Other One, their highly anticipated fifth full-length Metal Forth continues to blur the lines between twee pop and ludicrously impressive fret-melting metallics, whilst welcoming a Western array of guest artists who share the same symbiotic DNA for the unlikely bridging points between two of the most sonically disparate music genres. From pop-metal songstress Poppy to German "partycore" heroes Electric Callboy, Indian nu-metallers Bloodywood, Courtney LaPlante of Canadian metalcore giants Spiritbox, Texan instrumental prog rock maestros Polyphia and even Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello, it's evident that many artists in the scene recognise and respect the BABYMETAL mission statement to re-inject a major dose of fun back into a genre more guilty than most for taking itself too seriously.