http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/babymetal-j-pop-thrash-metal-japan
Sprinkling a sugary coating of teen-idol pop on to the remorseless clamour of death metal sounds like a musical fusion best confined to the imagination of a record industry executive.
But Babymetal, a trio of Japanese teenage girls, have paired rah-rah skirts and hair ribbons with infernal metallic riffs to produce what could be the most unlikely music phenomenon of the year.
The band's eponymous debut album is No 3 on iTunes' US rock chart and has made the online top 10 in six other countries, including the UK. The video for their new single, Gimme Chocolate, has received more than 3.7m views on YouTube, and their dramatic arrival on the international metal scene won them a place on the cover of the latest edition of Kerrang! magazine.
Babymetal's music owes more to the uncomfortable marriage between the J-pop perennials of Lolita fantasy than to the bare-bones metal sound of, say, Slipknot. In the Gimme Chocolate video, the guitarists and drummer are practically invisible, while the catchy chorus will sound more familiar to fans of J-pop girlband
AKB48.My wife, who's Japanese, was bothered by the title "Gimme Chocolate". That phrase has shameful connotations because it's what all the Japanese children would yell to the American soldiers who entered Japan after the war.
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