Reviews list for BABYMETAL - Metal Galaxy (2019)

I have found myself very distant from the metal community for quite some time. It seems like every time a new there is a new progressive-djent/avant-garde/extreme brutal death metal band doesn’t garner any mainstream attention, those fans complain that not enough people are listening to their new favourite artist. However, when a metal band manages to garner a little bit of mainstream attention, everyone loses their minds that their precious genre is being commercialized. Everyone needs a starting point to get into the different music genres. For me, it was the 90s output of Metallica, with the Load and Reload albums (I’m too young to remember the self titled album).

The new craze of the 2010s has been BABYMETAL, a J-Pop duo whose backing band uses distorted, and drop tuned electric guitars and double bass drums. None of these are bad things on their own. And hell, even the bands last album, METAL RESISTANCE, was a branch away from the very coy, happy-go-lucky nature of the self titled album. So I could only hope that METAL GALAXY would continue this trend.

Alright, props to everyone involved for experimenting with some new sounds. However, with an album called METAL GALAXY, it is pretty obvious from the start that this is going to be a more electronic metal experience. The opening track “FUTURE METAL” is proof of this; lots of synth and electronic percussion. And while this isn’t always a bad thing, BABYMETAL are a group that could have desperately used some better mixing of the electronic elements.

For one, the opening track “FUTURE METAL” uses these really generic sounding guitar tones, matched with a poorly mixed percussion whose bass thumps clip the mic and don’t sound pleasing at all. The vocals are almost always pushed to the front of the mix, but when the singer is in her higher register, it peaks on tracks like “PA PA YA!!” and “Starlight”. Otherwise, you end with the pitch corrected “IN THE NAME OF”, where the vocals are pitch shifted to Hell itself, over a Slipknot B-side.

Other tracks are mixed better; “Shanti Shanti Shanti” is alright and I really liked the atmospheric elements added to “Kagerou”. The group is at its best when the guitars are given heavy prominence, like on the power metal outro “Arkadia”, the counterpoint between voice and guitar on “DA DA DANCE” and the quasi-ballad “Shine”.

The experimental elements come in the form of hybrids with other styles of metal. “Shanti Shanti Shanti” has melodic passages that sound borrowed for oriental metal, which I respect, but artists like Orphaned Land have pulled sound off with organic tones much better in the past. “Oh! MAJINAI” borrows from folk and pagan metal as it uses bagpipes as a secondary melodic instrument and every time I hear it I can’t wipe that stupid grin off of my face. It’s so goofy, yet still very satisfying. “Distortion” is the groups attempt to crossover as it calls upon Alissa White-Gluz of Arch Enemy. And I already mentioned the power metal “Arkadia”, and the atmospherics of “Kagerou”.

As for the vocals themselves, they sound okay. I find that more often than not, when the vocalists are higher register, they peak in the mix and don’t really allow for any subtlety in the instrumentation. Of course, BABYMETAL is also dealing with the fact that they have lost one of their members since the release of METAL GALAXY. The vocal layering sounds fine, but it is quite obvious that a lot of the vocals have been fixed in post-production, which is a little disappointing.

As a whole, METAL GALAXY is a serviceable metal/pop record. I think that the group has had better days and that many of the experimental elements on this record don’t work as well as previous albums had. Still, there is nothing overtly offensive about it; this is pop music with crunchy guitars and djent-y breakdowns. If that sounds like something you would like, you probably will.