ALBUM REVIEW: The Other One – BABYMETAL
There’s really nobody quite like BABYMETAL. The oft-derided, equally-lauded Japanese pop-meets-extreme-metal group exploded into metal’s consciousness a decade ago with anthems like Megitsune and Gimme Chocolate!! that swiftly wormed their way into ears around the world. Naturally, there are sects of the metal community that despise them for their well-crafted image, stage routines, you name it – but far, far more embraced their “kawaii metal” for what it is; something that’s damned good fun, and bringing new ideas, and fans, to extreme music.
But as any band will tell you, soaring critical success doesn’t always work out the best; one of the original trio, Yui, left in 2018 citing ill health after missing a number of live shows and the band was – somewhat surprisingly – put on hiatus last year (or “sealed”, as it was teasingly named by the band). That wasn’t to last; in fact, the hiatus became the fuel for their latest album, The Other One, a full-bore concept record. Cited as a “restoration project” that saw the band exploring alternate realities to uncover different versions of BABYMETAL that had never been discovered and ten parallel worlds, each inspiring a new song on the album.
Sure, that’s all big and daft – and when has BABYMETAL been anything else but ludicrously over the top – but ultimately, the question is actually whether this is any good. Fear not, fans that’ve been waiting with bated breath; The Other One might just be BABYMETAL’s best work yet. Shorn of the glittery guest features of previous outing METAL GALAXY, the focus is far more on just what Moametal and Su-metal can do as a duo, along with the backing of their Kami Band, who frankly deserve far more plaudits than they get for providing the instrumental backbone to the band.
METAL KINGDOM makes apparent immediately that this is a more mature BABYMETAL than the one that first burst through speakers. That in itself shouldn’t be surprising, given Su-metal and Moametal are in their mid-20s now, not the early teens of when the band began. It begins with what sounds like ticking, as if counting down the entrance of this new era. It’s an arena-bothering behemoth as we’ve come to expect, though delivered at a more mid-pace than before. While it certainly doesn’t need to be nearing six minutes, it’s as bold an intro to the new era as they come.
That’s far from the only string to the bow, though. Despite being “sealed”, they’ve clearly been paying attention to what’s going on in the modern metal scene and cheerily draw on grisly low-end like the bass in Divine Attack – Shingeki, or its pseudo breakbeat in a verse that’s subsumed by churning groove and – as ever – a titanic chorus. Elsewhere, Mirror Mirror introduces what sounds like vocoders and autotune in a dehumanising effect, while MAYA opts for dance drums and Time Wave pushes in a similar vein with trance-like synth, both tailor made to fill the floors of rock clubs.
Naturally, BABYMETAL follow this up with the metalcore stylings of Believing and throw more dehumanised vocals into the mix that sounds like the natural extension of their earlier albums with crushing instrumental counterpointed by energetic J-pop. METALIZM goes totally off the deep end, throwing in thumping dance rhythms and Arabic melodies echoed across vocals and instruments. The Legend closes the album in full BABYMETAL power ballad mode, and throws in a GHOST-inspired saxophone solo for the sheer hell of it. BABYMETAL might be the band some love to hate, but to their credit The Other One is a far more mature outing that deserves to change more than a few of those minds, with this being their best album yet.
Rating: 8/10
The Other One is set for release on March 24th via Cooking Vinyl.
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