When Metal Goes Idols...

I was just reading back some of the comments from the blog I did on Babymetal's new single and saw this:

clocutron said:
"Next, I want to see a death metal group performing some idol j-pop songs – like Hypocrisy’s Peter Tägtgren belting out “Mecha Mote! Summer” by MM Gakuen Gasshoubu or King Diamond singing C-ute’s “Do Don ga Don Ondo”."

Well, I'd like to divert your attention to something I found not long ago, and then in my rush to do a giant mass of posts over on LI before December ran out on me completely forgot.

Meet Tetsuiro Clone X.



As you may have gleaned from the short PV for Z Densetsu, it's a metal tribute act to Momoiro Clover Z. And when I say metal, I mean real metal. None of that Evil Morning bullshit of some guy sitting in his bedroom, or even the Studio Burning JKB48 stuff with Galneryus' singer Ono Masatoshi singing badly over the top of slightly rearranged AKB48 songs that were already pretty damn metal in the first place.

No, this features metal people who actually release things and are well known, even outside Japan.

Mostly that's because they're pretty much all from outside Japan though.

So far, the revealed members are:

Marty Friedman (seriously, by this point who in the entire combined worlds of idol fandom and metal fandom wasn't aware that Marty's the most famous gaijin wota in the known universe?) on Guitar
Freddy Lim (political firebrand, AKB and Momoclo wota, president of Amnesty International in Taiwan, and also member of ChthoniC when he's not pissing off China) on vocals and erhu
MASAKI (Animetal, Liv Moon, Jigoku Quartet and formerly in Marty's live band) on Bass
Saegusa Kazuhito (some bands called Rosaryhill and Sun of a Starve) on drums.

Not satisfied with just one song, they've released a whole damn album of covers. The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Overture ～Tetsuiro Clone X Sanjou!!～
2. Z Densetsu～Owari Naki Kakumei～
3. Pinky Jones
4. Roudou Sanka
5. Chai Maxx
6. Zenryoku Shoujo
7. Mirai Bowl
8. Orange Note
9. Ikuze! Kaitou Shoujo
10. Mouretsu Uchuu Koukyoukyoku Dainana Gakushou "Mugen no Ai" ～introduction～
11. Mouretsu Uchuu Koukyoukyoku Dainana Gakushou "Mugen no Ai"
12. Z Densetsu～Owari Naki Kakumei～
13. Mouretsu Uchuu Koukyoukyoku Dainana Gakushou "Mugen no Ai" (instrumental)

Now that's a lot of Momoclo to metal up. So, some idea of what we have:





It's worth noting that Marty and Freddy seem to like the Mugen no Ai cover so much they keep playing it at ChthoniC gigs too:


If, however, like me, you find Freddy's vocals somewhat grating on the material (don't get me wrong, in ChthoniC he's great, but here it just doesn't work somehow), some helpful people have made at least two of the songs a bit more idol-happy:




Anyway, if you feel like buying this, I'm sure it's somewhere on HMV or Yesasia or something. Not on non-JP iTunes yet that I can find yet though. Unfortunate.

So yea, what think you? More metal in idols, or should we leave it to the idols to keep going metal?