“We are here to make coffee metal,” Nathan Explosion (Brendon Small) growls in the premiere of the mid-2000s’ Adult Swim series, Metalocalypse. “We will make everything metal. Blacker than the blackest black times infinity.” Unexpectedly, and maybe even improbably, in the years since the show’s cancellation (and subsequent cancellation via DTV films), the mission Nathan and his band, Dethklok, carried out in fiction has been picked up in real life by Japanese kawaii metal exemplars BABYMETAL. Five albums deep into their career, the band has done something extraordinary: They’ve figured out how to make thrashing, squealing, double-bass cacophonies cute, and make “cute” cacophonous.
Scratch that: four albums deep. 2023’s The Other One is just a “concept album,” says the band; METAL FORTH is the real thing. (It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the too tempting opportunity to mirror “forth” with “fourth.”) Regardless of whatever numerical hierarchy one assigns to METAL FORTH, the album functions as glaze poured over a penny table—something lovely layered upon something industrial—and in serving that function, makes metal’s best argument to date for the genre’s versatility. Incongruous, perhaps, given the music’s name is derived from among the hardest materials known to man, but BABYMETAL is nothing if not a walking, performing incongruity, in the best ways possible. Costumes, for instance, and especially over-the-top ones, are traditional to heavy metal, but BABYMETAL’s outfits hint of an intergalactic royalty otherwise missing in the culture.
Not that that matters when you’re listening to Metal Forth. All you’ll experience here is the music, characterized in part by a motif of creative humility; the number of featured musicians on each of the record’s 10 tracks outnumbers the solo BABYMETAL tracks. If so inclined, one might structurally characterize METAL FORTH as “BABYMETAL and friends” by consequence, which is a plenty sturdy framework to raise around what the band accomplishes through the depth of its collaborations: they’re joined by Bloodywood, Slaughter to Prevail, Tom Morello, Electric Callboy, Poppy, Polyphia, and Spiritbox in selection of songs that rock incredibly hard while demonstrating their creative range.
Dry as that sounds in a written review, the combined effect of BABYMETAL’s invitee list is nothing short of a joy to the ear. Joy being central to their discography dating all the way back to their 2014 self-titled debut, this comes as less than no surprise to both seasoned listeners and relative newcomers; excepting one changing of the guard between 2018 and 2023, when original member Yui Mizuno parted ways with the band and eventually was replaced with Momoko Okazaki, this is the same band that achieved international visibility in part by singing about their confectionary obsessions. That carefree exuberance is woven through METAL FORTH’s DNA, which means that even when BABYMETAL’s lead trio—Okazaki, Suzuka Nakamoto, and Moa Kikuchi—cede center stage to their pals, the record’s tone holds steady.
On “from me to u,” Poppy takes the reins with her brand of dark pop-cum-gothic metal, while Okazaki, Nakamoto, and Kikuchi fill the background with supplementary vocals; on “RATATATA,” they take the chorus as Electric Callboy seize the spotlight. Elsewhere, BABYMETAL purposefully, cleanly meshes with their peers, like “Kon! Kon!,” where their current tourmates, New Delhi’s Bloodywood, define the song’s structure while leaving plenty of space for the girls to invest themselves. They’re present on “Kon! Kon!,” with its big, swingy drum beat and hook, gelling so thoroughly with Bloodywood’s vocalists, Jayant Bhadula and Raoul Kerr, that they give the impression of belonging to the same act—not BABYMETAL or Bloodywood, but Bloodymetal or perhaps Babywood.
This motif takes primacy over the “guest stars” motif, because frankly, BABYMETAL being one with the likes of Spiritbox on METAL FORTH’s seventh track, “My Queen”—musically, a blistering fusillade of drop D palm-muted distortion, but lyrically celestial as Nakamoto leads Okazaki and Kikiuchi in graceful harmony. Effectively, the record is a statement about metal as an aesthetic rife with individualism; “metal” is not a monolith, and what it is to be “metal” varies from country to country, language to language, band to band. But no matter where metal comes from, or more appropriately who it comes from, all metal is metal. Nobody might’ve anticipated that BABYMETAL would be the band to make a demonstration of metal’s malleability, but in 2025, and on METAL FORTH, they’ve elected themselves as metal’s new mayors: the people responsible for showing the world, at a moment where the world is more pop-fixated than ever, that metal is for all, and that all can be metal together.
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can find his collected work at “his personal blog.” He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.
