Spacebunny heard Babymetal was going to be in Switzerland, a reasonable drive by American Midwestern standards, so she arranged to acquire some tickets as an early Father’s Day present. We prepared accordingly for the drive north… and yes, the bones do actually glow in the dark.
I was not the only one in costume. The various metalheads and headbangers greeted our outfits with distinct approval, as did the natives; cars were honking at us, and more than a few drivers waved and gave us thumbs-ups.
The venue was small and held about 1,000 people, with a stage that wasn’t much bigger than that of 7th Street Entry. The Kami band was great, Yui and Moa were ridiculously cute and hopped around like little Japanese Energizer bunnies, and Su-metal’s voice was surprisingly strong in the live environment. Ironically, the one downside of Babymetal is that the Kami band can be a little too focused on demonstrating their technical chops; they often sacrifice the song structure in order to show they can play as hard and as fast as anyone.
That’s why the audience was a little slow to totally get into it until they played Karate, which is more conventionally structured and has an anthemic quality to it as well as a big pop chorus. When they followed it up with Megitsune, the whole place blew up. There wasn’t enough space to do all the Road of Resistance theatrics properly, but the girls did bring out the black flags and got the crowd into singing along. I was a little disappointed they didn’t do Onedari Daisuken, but they did do Gimme Chocolate from the first album.
My favorite part was when the girls took a break, the two guitarists and the bassist mounted the pillars on which the girls had been standing at the front of the stage, and took turns doing some impressive solos. The two guitarists were very, very good, but the bassist played an Eddie Van Halen-style guitar solo on the bass, which is something I’d never actually seen before. It was a really fun show, and we all had a blast.
