Babymetal’s first album came out in Japan on 26 February 2014, on BMD Fox, an imprint of Toy’s Factory. The group had started in 2010 as the heavy music club of Sakura Gakuin, a school-themed idol group run by the agency Amuse, and the producer Kobametal built it around Suzuka Nakamoto, who sings as Su-metal. She was 16 when the record came out. Yui Mizuno and Moa Kikuchi, Yuimetal and Moametal, were 14. None of the three knew metal before the band. On release day the official channel posted a live clip of “Gimme Chocolate!!”, filmed at the song’s premiere the previous December, and the clip, now past 224 million views, is what carried them abroad. Under it, metal fans fought over whether any of this counted.
The album gathers the five singles the group put out from 2011 to 2013, from “Doki Doki ☆ Morning”, whose vocals were recorded in October 2010, to “Megitsune”, with B-sides and new songs. Kobametal produced all 13 tracks, and most of the writers hide behind pseudonyms ending in “-metal”. The arranging went to nine different people. The names a metal fan might know came from outside idol pop: Takeshi Ueda of the Mad Capsule Markets wrote and arranged “Gimme Chocolate!!”, Narasaki of Coaltar of the Deepers did the same for “Catch Me If You Can” and “Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!”, and the Vocaloid producer Yuyoyuppe arranged four songs, including the opener, and wrote “Rondo of Nightmare”. Kobametal told the Guardian that the girls, still at school, could only work in the studio until 8pm.
The variety is built in. “Gimme Chocolate!!” swings between a thrash opening, with Yuimetal and Moametal shouting sound effects, and a major-key pop chorus; Nakamoto has said it is about girls who love chocolate and worry about their weight. “Iine!” stops for a group rap, and “Song 4”, credited to Yuimetal and Moametal as Black Babymetal, drops into a reggae passage. Su-metal sings “Akatsuki” and “Rondo of Nightmare” alone. “Megitsune” is about women who hide what they feel, like the fox of its title, and the closer, “Ijime, Dame, Zettai”, the longest song at 6:06, asks the listener not to stand by while someone is bullied.
On stage the girls had first performed in front of the Babybones, an air band in skeleton suits miming to backing tracks. A real band, later known as the Kami Band, arrived in late 2012 and played the big dates, including two nights at the Nippon Budokan on 1 and 2 March 2014. The album reached No. 4 on the Oricon chart and stayed on it for 130 weeks, and it entered the Billboard 200 at No. 187.
Most reviews were warm. Rolling Stone Japan and AllMusic gave it 4.5 out of 5, and Kerrang! gave it 4 while calling it cynical and fabricated. The Japan Times liked it but said it flags whenever it falls back on the basic mix of power chords, howls and cheerful singing, and that the variety comes from the hired writers. No Clean Singing credited the backing players and singled out the solos. The Metal Observer gave it 3 out of 10 and liked only “Megitsune” and “Ijime, Dame, Zettai”, the two songs that give Su-metal the most room. When the UK release came in 2015, Metal Hammer described purists as somewhere between exasperated and enraged by a manufactured band, and gave it 4 out of 5 anyway. MetalSucks readers voted it the best metal album of 2014.
The fans who answered “Gimme Chocolate!!” with some version of “this isn’t metal”, and asked for the attention to go to bands still waiting for theirs, had more of a point than the view count suggests. As a metal album this is a weak one. The solos are where the formula shows: No Clean Singing loved them, but to us they are a box the record ticks because metal records have solos, not a reason to come back. The style-hopping is the selling point, and review after review explained it by naming someone who did each part first: Maximum the Hormone, Melt-Banana, Limp Bizkit, the Browning, European power metal. The one thing metal had not heard before is Su-metal, and even the harshest review liked the songs built around her. Twelve years and four albums later she is still at the centre of Babymetal, with Moametal and, since 2023, Momometal. Yuimetal left in 2018.
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