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Music

Babymetal Is Your New Favorite Japanese Nü-Metal Girl Group

Meet the teens who have been sent to destroy you.

Above this sentence floats "Megitsune," a music video for the Japanese girl group Babymetal. I am fairly confident when I say that they are unlike any other band you have ever been exposed to ever before. They combine fairly standard high-concept pre-fab Asian pop with instrumentation that wouldn't sound out of place on the slickest record Slipknot never made. By all human logic, this shouldn't work in the least, but it does, completely and unequivocally, through both the machinations of the J-Pop machine as well as the sheer force of their own weird.

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I am not here to judge Babymetal, or say whether or not you should enjoy them. I am simply here to point out that they are a thing that exist in the universe, and that some people like—nay, love—them, and that they exist as a reminder that what has been watched cannot be un-watched.

Perhaps their finest video is for "Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!" It is below.

According to Wikipedia, the three singers in Babymetal were unaware of what heavy metal was when the group was first formed, back in the annals of time (2011). Since then, they've released several batshit-insane music videos, a record titled Babymetal, and recently completed a two-day concert at Budokhan, joining the ranks of Cheap Trick, Bob Dylan, Blur, and uh, Avril Lavigne. All of the three performers' names incorporate the word "METAL" in all-caps, and their combined age is as of this posting 44 (lead singer SU-METAL is 16, while screamers MAOMETAL and YUIMETAL are both 14).

My best advice on how to deal with Babymetal is to follow the lesson of "Headbangeeeerrrrr!!!!!": strap a neck brace on and rock the fuck out.

Drew Millard is on Twitter - @drewmillard