Alone With Our Metal

Head Banging To The Void

Little Bean sporting her Baby Metal tee. There were no Baby Metal movie posters so she selected The Little Mermaid.

Remember when Taylor Swift put out The Eras Tour movie and all the theaters were packed with families and kids singing in the aisles and it was a whole cultural phenomenon?!

Remember that?

Well, I’m here to tell you that Little Bean and I trucked on down to Massachusetts over the weekend to catch the new Baby Metal concert movie and, well, you know… there were seven people in the theater.

*sigh*

There were no posters. No flyers. The lady at the counter told us they didn’t even get any promotional materials for the movie, which by the way was showing only that one time, that day. The theater itself didn’t even have the movie title over the door, we had to ask where it was showing.

The movie had no sub-titles and we had to sit through 20 minutes of R-rated previews before it started.

I’m unclear why they’d even show it if they would put zero effort into promoting it. Perhaps it was some company obligation thing, I don’t know.

This is all to set the stage, however, for the fact that we had a really fun time. There was a dad, and daughter about Little Bean’s age, that sat right next to us and the girl danced and enjoyed herself as much as we did.

The movie was of a two-day concert last March that took place in Okinawa Convention Center Exhibition Hall in front of 4,000 screaming fans. The group is much bigger in Asia and Europe than in the U.S. as is almost always the case. (I’ll leave it up to you to come to your own conclusions about American tastes in music.)

But, we bought a huge bucket of cheddar popcorn, shared a Sprite and pulled those big pleather recliner seats all the way back. After all, we pretty much had the theater to ourselves.

“Daddy,” Little Bean said at one point, “I have such a sugar rush and there’s so much happening on screen that my eyes can barely take it!”

How’s that for a movie review?

Here’s a video of our favorite song from the movie, a ripping Rap/Metal tune called BMC. Of the songs that were new to her, this was Little Bean’s favorite and I think you’ll see why.

I won’t go on about Baby Metal’s music or the show itself, which combines all manner of cultural touchstones, from Kabuki theater to mythology to straight up thrash metal. Little Bean loves their costumes and the spectacle of the band and that’s good enough. Someday, I hope they’ll come back our way and we’ll go see them.

After, we walked across the parking lot to a mostly empty arcade and blew another five bucks on claw machines.

All in all, a loud, sugary and delightful evening, and just the beginning of a memorable, musical week!