BABYMETAL’s third album, METAL GALAXY, is out. The US tour has finished. The avalanche of interviews and photos in magazines continues unabated. We talk about the events surrounding the album release, the various album editions, and some of the delightful video and print interviews we are getting. Join us!

(This episode was recorded about a week before METAL GALAXY was released, but we were all traveling and busy and so this took a long time for us to release to the podcast feed. Still, listen along to relive those days before we knew what would happen at The Forum, or what the album would actually be like.) The US tour continues on, we hear about this year’s version of the Kansas City show. BABYMETAL are counting down to the METAL GALAXY release with short album spoilers, and showing up in many more magazines, and they announced a new Legend show in January 2020. Join us!

Facing down a hurricane, BABYMETAL launched its US tour, spinning through six stops from Orlando to New York City by the time we recorded. Paul gives a long-winded report on the Boston show, we talk about Avatar as an opening band, the new Kami band line-up, and the sudden rush of magazine cover stories and interviews leading up to the release of Metal Galaxy. Join us!

In the gap between our prior episode and the beginning of the US tour, we spent some time looking into the backgrounds of the three Brave Avengers. We talk a bit about Riho Sayashi and her history with Morning Musume, and then dove moderately deep into what Sakura Gakuin is with the help of Gabe, our guest expert. We cover how SG relates to BABYMETAL’s origins, and Kano Fujihira’s and Momoko Okazaki’s history in SG, and lots about the structure of SG in general. Join us, for this feature-length episode.

** SPOILER ALERT**

In this special episode, we talk about the 30-second previews that recently surfaced for the tracks on the forthcoming METAL GALAXY album. THESE ARE SPOILERS. If you do not want to hear about the contents of the album before it is released, listen to this episode later. Also: the previews themselves are not played in this episode, and we cannot provide them for you. Join us.

BABYMETAL played two sets at Summer Sonic 2019, which featured Headbanger and a return of the smoke cannons. 8 minutes were streamed, and Star Wars video games were played. Elevator Girl (English ver.) was released along with an MV, leaving us with much to wonder about. Join us.

Welcome to the (surprisingly complicated) world of METAL GALAXY. BABYMETAL revealed the track lists, collaborations, and cover art for nine different physical editions of their forthcoming album. We go on an odyssey through the METAL GALAXY versions, evaluating old predictions and making new ones. We also talk about BABYMETAL’s performance at Super Slippa 10, the reveal of Momoko Okazaki as the third of three Brave Avengers, the announcement of upcoming shows in Hong Kong (November) and Taipei (April), and thoughts from GALACTIC EMPIRE about playing with BABYMETAL in Japan. Join us!

A couple of promotional videos have been posted, one for the upcoming US shows, and one for the Super Slippa festival, and a couple of magazine features have come out (Kerrang, Anan, Backstage Pass) as well. An intercept of Su-metal’s in-ear monitor from Legend M surfaced. And we spend fully half the episode discussing parts of several interviews with Key Kobayashi (Kobametal), where he talks about the BABYMETAL concept, notes on individual songs, the process. Join us!

BABYMETAL turned footage of Yokohama night 2 into a PA PA YA!! official MV, in record time, and the views are pouring in. Legend M happened, and it was glorious. Moa narrated the opening, and sang Headbanger. Also, a new song (“SHINE” according to the copyright bots) debuted, a performance duet between Su-metal and Moametal, with Moa on stage with a guitar. We have first-hand reports from all the Yokohama and Nagoya shows. We have a set list from Brixton, where Syncopation had its debut outside of Japan. Moa turned 20, F. Hero did some interviews, and BABYMETAL did an interview in Anan magazine. Join us for the next installment in the news deluge.

June 28, 2019, arrived and suddenly we are drowning in news. Even shorthanded, we needed to record something, so we attempted a quick overview of the news to date as of the moment of recording. Spoiler: we succeeded in the overview part, not the quick part. (Also spoiler: more news arrived after we recorded, which we will talk about next time!) People started receiving the Dark Night Carnival/Download 2018 set, Tattoo became Kagerou, PA PA YA!! was officially released. Two performances in Yokohama and one in Glastonbury gave us two new songs, lots of new photos and videos, a bonus sound check, new costumes and visuals, and a new approach to covering the third on-stage position. Two of three “brave avengers” in that position (Riho, Kano) have appeared so far. If that weren’t enough, we also got a title and release date for the upcoming album (METAL GALAXY, Oct 11, 2019), and Japanese and extensive European dates added onto the tour, which now stretches until March 2020. The Glastonbury show provided pro-shot footage and a bonus sound check. And there are interviews again. We talk for a long time about all of this, and there will still be more to say later. It’s an exciting time to be a BABYMETAL fan! Join us!