Given the choice, I prefer Doll$Boxx. These girls play their own instruments, and, once you get past the stereotypical “grown women talking like toddlers” thing they do at the start, they actually sing well.
Granted, I didn’t check out the link Edward The Head posted, yet.
Babymetal rules!
That’s certainly better than BabyMetal. I think the clothing and baby talk at the beginning may be them mocking that part of Japanese pop culture. It’s a deliberate contrast to the later video of hard rocking adult women.
Here’s what I wrote in the SDMAS thread a few months back:
This is 100% a corporate product. The girls weren’t even familiar with metal before the concept was forced onto them.
I’m sorry, it’s shit.
It’s the same cookie cutter idol crap song that gets recycled and pasted everywhere in Japan. Ooooh but this one’s pasted on top of a heavy metal track. Sorry, not good enough.
And, in case you think I might need to lighten up, it’s not just that I’m fed up having to hear variations in this song every day, it’s that I have a daughter. Watching this video reminds me of the sort of society she’s growing up in. You’re a girl, so be cute, look like a dumb child, don’t ask questions, do as you’re told, here, you’re a metal band now just because everything else’s been done to death.
Fuck that.
Because kids need to get of my lawn, I’m going to add that back in the days you could be cute and heavy because that’s who you were, not because some guy in a suit thought it would sell.
shrug Some people get it and others don’t. I don’t think even the creators know how cool it is. At least, I hope not, because unintentional irony is ever so much cooler. 
Wow that took me by surprise.
DO NOT SHOW THIS TO MY SON. He will run away and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT.
That’s exactly what I felt on first listen. Metal-by-numbers with JPop thrown over the top. That said, it amuses me. I, too, wonder if it’s just taking the piss.
Sentimental Bus was the only band I liked back in college (when I lived in Japan) that made it big. I’m still rather surprised that they took off, but definitely it’s got to be the band which puts the most sheer “we’re having a kick-ass time playing this music” of any band I know.
It might make you less angry if your daughter was watching this instead.
Difficult to tell under the makeup sometimes, but the band is all-female. I'd classify it more as extremely heavy Goth/visual kei, but only because I have caught flack from metalheads in the past for not understanding the intricate maze of classes, subclasses, subsubclasses, and international culture feuds in the genre. :D They're not smash-hit superstars, but they're well-known enough to have toured in the US and Europe.Babymetal is one of those things that just sort of makes me shrug and go, “Eh, Japan.”
Hmmm… listening to the song in the original post, my first thought was “Great, take the worst of pop and mix it with the worst of metal.” Just many layers of bad there, sorry.
But I was intrigued enough to look around a little more. Their song Akatsuki I could actually listen to a second time.
Neither one is going to make it to my regular playlists, though.
My kids aren’t quite at that age yet :). That’s much more generic J-metal.
This girl, though, she’s the shit.
Wata, from Boris also rocks.
And, if girly girls playing metal really is your thing, Galmet is at the very least the real thing and not a marketing campaign.
Nah, not really. It’s kind of hilarious, but I can listen to Dethklok for silly metal. Plus, I think J-pop (and now J-pop-metal) always sounds like it’s the theme to a bad anime series.
'Zactly.
What makes Steel Panther tiring is that it’s so ridiculously nasty that it was only funny on the first album. After that, it just became uncomfortable and they really weren’t bringing enough talent to look past it.
Babymetal, I’ve liked every song I’ve heard from them and I love the choreography. IF there’s one thing metal needs more of it’s more performance. You see a metal show now you don’t actually have any reason to actually watch the band. Nothing’s going on.
I initially read the thread title as “survivors of Babymetal.”
No, that’s what makes Steel Panther so tiring to you. I have a different set of things I dislike about them.
I disagree with your characterization of all metal shows that are not Babymetal shows. I have a great time watching the band perform and I find that most bands are performing, not just standing on stage playing their instruments.
Babymetal is product; no different than N’Sync or Spice Girls or any Kpop or Jpop act is product.
I don’t know whether or not they’re just product, but from watching a minute or two of the OP’s link, I feel safe in saying that Babymetal is theater, as opposed to (pure) music. Which is what some people (including, apparently, adaher) want.
For me it’s about the music more than anything else, and Babymetal delivers. No, it’s not Avantasia, but it’s good, it’s providing that pop/metal hybrid that is cool as a change of pace.
There’s a lot of music like that in Japan. The visual kei genre and all of its subdivisions descends basically from what Western audiences would recognize as “glam rock”, only it’s Japan, so they’ve turned it up about 400%. The bands that finally broke through into the mainstream are full of people who list acts like KISS as their main inspiration.
One of the most famous AND most theatrical is Malice Mizer. You can look them up on YouTube, but I recommend you not, unless you’re prepared for the constant surreal shaky-cam, the Gothy vampire drag queen, loads of fake blood, and eyeball licking.
ETA: If you’re going to hunt them down anyway, eyeball licking be damned, it’s probably useful to know that “music video” is “PV”, short for “promotional video”, in Japanese parlance.