More about: BABYMETAL

Babymetal woke Reading up this Saturday morning (29 August) with their completely bonkers and mind-blowing set.

As the lights dimmed on the main stage, we were treated to a Star Wars/Stanley Kubrick style epilogue roughly outlining the future of the metallic arts. Their was a loose narration about the integrity of the music, the metal God and Babymetal - the band who are going to unlock metal's most hidden secrets.

Babymetal, if you didn't know, are a Japanese metal idol trio that recently broke out of the Japanese market, and have been revered by the Western world for their absurdity and actually-really-great brand of pop-metal.

Their backing band donned gothic white face paint and played unreal BPMs effortlessly. The Babymetal trio took vocal and performance responsibilities, as they pranced around the stage with seriously impressive choreography. It's not easy to dance well to dance music, let alone speed metal.

The crowd comprised people of all backgrounds and creeds clad in Babymetal merchandise. And despite this dedication, accurate singalongs were rarely performed well - even when lead singer, Su-Metal, repeated the melody back at the crowd - but the lyrical butchering didn't matter too much. Everyone was having too much fun.

At the back end of the set, Babymetal cut away to another visual prompt telling of Babymetal's rise to fame and the mantra behind true metal being true bravery. If we could understand any of the band's lyrics, we might identify some plot, but the gist of this intermission was to make a stand against bullying by - wait for it - inciting a wall of death.

Maybe the earliest wall of death in Reading history, the probably hungover crowd raised their devil horns in the air and clashed with an almighty chorus of groans and laughter.

Babymetal have announced an arena show at London's Wembley on 2 April. If you want to experience the madness for yourselves, visit here for more tickets and information.

More about: BABYMETAL