With the mud of Leeds still caked on the heels of their Doc Martens, Babymetal continue their unrelenting quest for world domination with not one but two live double-DVDs.
Opinions – generally of the frothy and extreme variety – have long calcified around Babymetal, with the majority of critics and metalheads joyfully embracing their mindblowing fusion of cartwheeling J-Pop theatricality and neck-snapping death metal brutality.
Flawlessly captured in these DVDs – and impossible to absorb in their polished, heavily edited videos – is the sheer cinematic scale of their show, a euphoric siege of hyperkinetic choreography, hallucinatory video montages, face-melting pyrotechnics and the brutal-as-fuck strafing of the Kami band. Across all four shows, diminutive singers Su-metal, Yuimetal and Moametal don’t simply act like they’ve been there before – they absolutely slay every single number, particularly Rondo Of Nightmare, Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!! and the blistering new speed metal freakout, Road Of Resistance.
The sublime sight of a queue of burly British metallers in Slipknot and Maiden tees happily filing into a sold-out Brixton underscores the astronomic span of their cross-cultural appeal, and while you might not need both DVD sets, each administers a bludgeoning reminder that Babymetal are here to stay.
