A Shocking World Reformation Metal Song

Also known as HOLY FUCK BATMAN Babymetal are back and I think they want to kill you. Or at least, burn you to death. Or moe you to death. I'm never actually sure which. It stands to reason though that as soon as I finish reviewing the last Sakura Gakuin album the video for Ijime, Dame, Zettai, the long awaited and forever buried in a live-only format song has been released. And HOLY FUCK is it epic. Not just the song, oh no. The video is more epic than Tyr. In fact, the bloke in the video looks like he might be from Tyr...

Anyway, here is the video:



So, where to start? I suppose the beginning might be the best place...

A flaming guitar, a sorrowful piano piece, SUMETAL singing a sad vocal line that would sound a little more sad if she wasn't singing "lu lu luuuu lu lu luuuuu", unless that's a really meta dig at all the comments on Blabbermouth that flame Babymetal but admit that "at least it's better than Lulu" (in reference to Metallica's shit collaboration with Lou Reed, if you haven't heard of it). The girls themselves are robed in a way that reminds me slightly of Satyricon's epic video for Mother North (though, minus the corpsepaint, blood and nudity), and the Babybones band thing have returned. Then there's the man from Tyr...

Then metal...

From here on I'll let you decide your own way. I love the fuck out of it, especially when Moa and Yui are dual-soloing on guitars (Moa's tapping = hilarious), Sumetal's vocals throughout, and the not-very-subtle dig at rap/hiphop as the one repressing the Tyr guy...

*insert "help, help, I'm being repressed!" here*

Anyway, from this, I'm supporting even more what I said in my review on LI. You can graduate Suzuka from Sakura Gakuin but PLEASE do not let her leave Babymetal. Really. She's fucking awesome. And this is also fucking awesome. Power metal, no hints of techno or rap or anything. Just good old metal. And win. Lots and lots of win.

Enjoy fuckers.

Sakura Gakuin - 2011 Nendo~Friends~ review

Long overdue, despite saying last week that I'd be reviewing all these albums really quickly by the end of November, I've done exactly nothing since (due to having my left ear rather helpfully decide that it really didn't want to work anymore), but I'm getting around to reviewing all these bloody things now I'm fixed. Eventually. Next up will be either Super Girls I guess. Or Passpo. Or BiS. Oh, who the fuck knows. But I'm not reviewing SKE's album anymore. Any original album with so many tracks, so few of which are new, is nothing more than a best-of album masquerading as a real album. Anyway, SakuGaku tiem.

Preamble: So, with this album I'm a good eight months late with the review. Good start. The cover looks sort of like you'd expect, the graduating girls in the middle and everyone else elsewhere. The logo design is horrible though. Anyway, with hope onwards to the music.

Himekyun Fruits Can - Renai Miracle review

I've got so many reviews to write now it's getting ridiculous, so I'm going to try and bash them all out before the end of November so that I can spend all of my December writing up year-in-review posts that everyone hates just to annoy them when I "overlook" a certain album they think is the best thing ever just because they really like the girls in a certain group yet have no conception about the musical merit (or increasingly, the lack thereof) whatsoever.

So, my to-do list from now til the end of daysthe year:

• Super Girls review (album released in February)
• Sakura Gakuin review (album released in March)
• Himekyun review (album released in August)
• SKE48 review (album released in September)
• BiS review (album released in October)
• Passpo review (album released in November)
• H!P Year in Review
• xxx48 Year in Review
• Stardust/Avex/Local/Indie Idols Year in Review
• Final post and awards

So, I have my work cut out for me considering I've now not posted anything since mid-September. I'm not going to do TGS' album because I've a feeling I won't like it, and will flame it mercilessly.

But anyway, I digress. Himekyun Fruits Can are from Ehime. Some Japanese guy in Paris introduced me to them at the Buono gig in February; straight after he proclaimed his eternal devotion to Momochi and H!P. I guess being a fan of local idols doesn't make you DD. But yea, he introduced me to them. Then I forgot their name. Took a quick wotatrip to Manchester and the skills of people with smartphones to locate their name, at the Tokyo Idol Festival website or something, and from there I've not looked back. Did a brief intro to them in my pervy post, but haven't said anything since then. Until now. So, review time.

So, remember BiS?

Those crazy nutcases now on Avex have done quite a lot of things to disturb people in recent times, including but not limited to fake naked PVs, gore/amateur porn PVs, crucifiction and corpse paint metal and school swimsuit battle sequences. If that's not enough to fully convince you that their sanity (or apparent lack thereof) is worth a gander, then how about their latest PV?



They've seemingly abandoned idol singing entirely, instead substituting for screaming, growling and other things assuredly well-known to the metalhead readers. I must say, not bad growling for Japanese girls. Not quite Gallhammer level yet, but pretty damn good. Musically it's a death metal/metalcore type thing with techno bits added in (sounds like it was written by Blood Stain Child, actually), but done right this could be the most interesting thing to occur in idoldom for a while. Shame they beat Babymetal to the screaming though, I was looking forward to Su-metal letting out a Varg-esque wail.

Even so, the fact that this is being released on Avex makes me wonder if I was wrong about them all along. I assumed they were a "trendy" label that released all the urban flavoured stuff, and jumped on the idol bandwagon with Super Girls (and later signing SKE) when it looked profitable. Not counting TGS and Sweets and that lot because Avex have a history of putting out dance-and-vocal units like that. But that Avex either encourage (or just don't try to stop) BiS to release such utter insanity means that they're either attempting to promote a shakeup of the Japanese music industry, or they just don't give a shit about BiS (which often happens when indie groups get a major label deal, get given a massive advance and then spend months in a studio producing something more massive in scale than anything the genre's seen before, when all the label were expecting was a single).

But anyway, BiS' new album is out near the end of October. If this is any indication it might (might...) just end up being my top idol album of the year (not that it has much competition, unless Momoclo decide to release one).

Speaking of my albums of the year, at the moment in the provisional top 15 there's only one idol album, so I expect to be lynched in my annual year-end post on Luscious Idolicious... On the other hand I get to recommend some epic music that people probably haven't been listening to. It's fun to convert metalheads and prognerds to idols, but I find turning idol fans to metalheads and prognerds rather harder. Maybe this year I'll succeed.

And on that tangential note I depart.

Morning Musume - 13 Colourful Character review (and musings on 11th gen)

So, in case you've been hiding under a rock these past few days you will have seen that Momusu have a new member, the only 11th gen member, Oda Sakura. She's from Kanagawa, is 13, was an Egg (or Kenshuusei, as they're now calling them), and can sing passably well. Given the relative lack of vocal talent in the group since Aichan and Gaki's departures I suppose it's a given that they added a girl who could at least hold a tune.

First thought when I heard a girl had been announced was "I hope she's not another soulless bugger." So I watched her introduction video thing. First impression was that she looked as if she'd been hit with a frying pan. A rather hot frying pan. After that I decided I was being a bit cruel, and that instead she looked like a garden gnome. Then I realised, meh, she looks like a goblin.

Thus ends my brief musings on 11th gen.

Preamble: Well, the cover is certainly colourful, though the rainbow is a bit screwy. Nothing else really to note on the cover.

Buono! - SHERBET review

So, scarcely a week since my last review and now I've got another one to do. I think it seems like my next few posts at least will all be reviews, as the new Momusu album is out soon too, so I may as well get them all done.

Preamble: Well, that is one slightly pastel-coloured cover. Colours are random, but Airi's face is lol. In fact, this whole cover looks like they're looking into a male changing room or something. Miya's very interested, Momo's protecting her tits but can't look away, and Airi's mock shocked. Still, lol.

AKB48 - 1830m review

So, AKB have released another album, which means I have to listen to it, and from there, review it. Though granted, while I do still have a few albums on my review to-do list (Sakugaku and Super Girls spring to mind), I can't be bothered with them yet so I'll just savagereview this one and then maybe at some point in the future do the others. Or just do a Passpo and review them in the year-end list. But anyway, I digress.

Preamble: The cover is less psychotic than the last one. The tracklist is highly disturbing, not because of the titles so much as the sheer fucking number of songs. 34 songs. 2.5 hours. I think I can safely say that this will be an extremely long post. The title is a bit boring, the same title as the Dome concert, which happens to be 1830m away from the AKB Theatre. Still, at least they don't feel the need to number every album like some groups.

FAKSM #20: World's End Girlfriend - "DECALOGUE minus 8"

I came by chance upon a song one day. Have you ever got bored with the music you're currently listening to, but want to find something similar? Often I do, and I turn to Last.fm's frankly astoundingly useless radio. Useless because quite often it's all put down to the "similar artists" bit, which I've no idea how they figure out. For example, my band has a load of National Socialist Black Metal as similar artists. Just because we once released a split with one of them.

On the other hand, this dissonance in values and incompetence often leads to staggering revelations of musical taste, things that you'd never think to listen to actually sounding quite decent. For example, I discovered Jesu from Napalm Death's radio station (an easily link considering Broadrick's involvement in both). From Jesu I discovered the delights of Alcest, the only French band I've liked since Indochine.

One day I was sitting, blissfully unaware, listening to some radio of recommendations (obviously Last.fm will know what I should be listening to, with my artists so full of Jpop, Metal and Prog), and I find this.



My mind reels. This is the most insane thing I've ever heard. And I love it. I have no idea what genre it is, I'll just leave it at "experimental" and hope you experiment with it. I hope your mind breaks as much as mine did.

Of Perverted Proclivities and Pristine Maidens

Also known as part two of my Token Pervy Post from last year which was short on actual perversion and merely existed as a sort-of mid-year update of recent idols that had caught my interest. Expect minor predictions on my next Idols of the Year list or whatever, plus a small dose of randomness or whatever I feel like typing at any given moment.

First randomness: Why the hell won't Blogspot let me save this damn thing as a draft whenever it has the word "Perverted" in the title? Bloody google.

Anyway, onwards we ride, with sunlight burning our eyes, into the depths of... heaven?

Of France, Momoclo, Idoling!!! and all that jazz...

The tales of my travails and travels in France are once again dreary, long-winded, full of moaning and boredom and melancholy, thus likely incredibly boring to read. Therefore, it falls to me to present a somewhat abridged version of the events that have occured over the past few days. Abridged, of course, meaning below 6000 words, instead of the usual festering miasma of verbal diarrhoea that I viscerally ejaculate into being that often approaches the size of the small novel.

Nevertheless, I shall once again begin in that altogether familiar temporal location, to wit, the beginning.

Not three months since I'd last suffered France at the hands of Buono, it was announced that my current favourite group of the now, Momoiro Clover Z, would also be making the arduous journey to France, for that unholy coagulation of French weeaboo: Japan Expo.

It was also announced later that Idoling!!! would be there too, in a somewhat diminished form, but my knowledge of Idoling!!! is remaining steady at a level of just above zero.

But anyway, imagine my shock. Having only just recovered (both mentally and financially) from Buono, I would now have to return to the place that has probably now re-overtaken Venezia as my least favourite place in the world: Paris.

As I tried in vain to find a worthy party to aid me in my quests, I hit dead-end upon dead-end. My fellow Northern!wota (Gina, Mark, Orob, Pete, Andy and Lara) all either had no interest in Momoclo or were otherwise occupied. Dean had fucked off to Japan, where his girlfriend was now taking up more time than idols (shock horror). My bandmate Chris had spent all his money on studio equipment, my college mate was too busy gardening for money, and my only interested friend from down south never got back to me (the cunt).

I began to look further afield. Henkka expressed his hesitation at going for a group he liked but wasn't approaching professorial knowledge about. Luckily, in Ole I found my partner-in-crime. Those Norwegians are lucky rich buggers. Less than a week before departure we found our third musketeer: Watanabe, everyone's favourite "has an unhealthy interest in foreign wota" wota.

Our party now complete, we began our quest.