And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #305: Rob Zombie v Babymetal Haters

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 13 May 2016

Rob Zombie met Babymetal at the weekend. You may already know this, because he posted a picture of himself with the Japanese trio to his Facebook page. Then a load of old men decided that this was a thing that should not have happened.

Despite them having the word ‘metal’ in their name, various men deemed that Baby Metal were in no way metal. Reasons for this included them being “lame”, “awful” and “a shameful embarrassment to anything metal”. But they do have ‘metal’ in their name, so you’re kind of stuck there. Next you’ll be telling me Rob Zombie isn’t an actual zombie.

Oh yeah, speaking of Rob Zombie, he did not agree with any of these accusations. “They roll harder than you”, he told one commenter. “These three girls had more energy than 90% of the bands we play with”, he told another. They are still teenagers though, so that’s probably to be expected.

To a man who said that seeing Zombie with Babymetal made him want to cry, and that their music made him want to kill things, the former White Zombie frontman delivered his choicest comeback: “They are nice kids out on the road touring. What are you doing besides being a grumpy old fuck?”

What indeed. Maybe we will never know. Commenting on the meeting themselves, Babymetal said: “Thank you Rob! The spirit of HEAVY METAL traversed across the world, rose above language barriers, went beyond generations and created countless legends”.

I’m not 100% sure what that means, but it sounds good. The trio are aware that they’re not to everyone’s taste though, something they discussed in a new interview with Noisey.

“People are free to think whatever they think”, said Su-metal. “We are very aware that there are people that do not agree with what we do or do not think that what we do is metal”. She added that having people around who don’t like them is “part of the learning process” and that “every one person who is interested in Babymetal’s music is enough” anyway.

On their contribution to the metal scene in general, Moametal said that they now see “a lot of younger kids” coming to their shows and hope “to introduce younger people or people our age to metal”. So that’s the next generation of metal fans sorted, all of whom will probably grow up to make and enjoy music that old men think is shit. Which is as it should be. Long may it continue.