Gimme BABYMETAL

I've responded once already to 'Gimme Chocolate', the song and video that launched BABYMETAL onto the world stage. So instead of featuring the official MV again, here's another fancam shot on location at Zepp, KL on their 2023 world tour.

'Gimme Chocolate' was indeed my very first encounter with the band. It was years ago, but in all places, a shopping mall in Bangkok, while I was on vacation. A song with a beat much heavier than all the other songs playing on the PA system made me perk up and pay attention. Then children's voices piped up -- in Japanese, and I was in Thailand -- and they kept repeating one English word that I could recognize: 'chocolet-to'. I remember thinking it could have been some weird commercial for chocolate, but the music went on longer than any commercial should have. Intrigued, I was determined to research this band and find out more about this weirdness once I got back home. But the Internet being what it was back then, and me possessing the attention span of a goldfish, I completely forgot about it.

The second time I encountered BABYMETAL was when they took their first tour to the USA, and they appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to publicize their new album. That's when my memory clicked back, and I could now connect this distant memory of a song with its performers. So I looked them up on YouTube, curious to find out what they were like back in Japan. I saw the Gimme Choco video, and I dimly remember watching 'Headbanger' as well. My brain instantly shut down due to sensory overload. Also, the girls were too young to be making this kind of music. It felt so wrong. Somebody behind the scenes had to be exploiting these poor kids for profit, and I really didn't want to give them any more of my attention.

I guess it was the third time, encountering them on The First Take that I realized how talented SU and MOA were. If it had been just a quick cash grab like I thought back then, they wouldn't have continued making music this long, and they wouldn't have evolved their music to grow up along with them. And so began my delving into the Foxhole, perhaps hoping that their art could help inspire something of my own.