By Casey Baseel, RocketNews24

Japanese musical trio Babymetal is in the middle of a world tour, and while in London the band attended the Kerrang! Awards, sponsored by the UK’s Karrang! music magazine. This wasn’t their first time to be there, either. In 2015, Babymetal took home the organization’s Spirit of Independence Award, and this time they followed up on that success by winning Kerrang’s title of Best Live Band of 2016.

The announcement was a happy moment for the group and its fans. The crowd applauded enthusiastically, and the three teen musicians made their way to the front of the amphitheater to be officially given the award by presenter Benji Webbe, singer for Welsh metal/rock/reggae band Skindred.

Things got weird once on stage, though, as shown in the video below. 18-year-old Suzuka Nakamoto, Babymetal’s oldest member who’s also known as Su-Metal, begins an acceptance speech in accented but understandable English, starting with “I can’t believe we’re here at Kerrang! Award [sic] again,” at which point the 49-year-old Webbe interrupted by repeating “Again” into his mike.

Despite the fact that she was addressing the audience, Nakamoto turns to Webbe and says, “Thank you,” to which he baffling responds “Again.”

Still trying to be polite, Nakamoto once more turns to Webbe and says “Yes,” giving him the benefit of the doubt that he’s not being a jerk, but simply hasn’t understood her. Webbe clearly needs more attention, tough, because rather than letting the performers who just won the award he’s presenting talk, he continues jabbering over Nakamoto’s speech, and adds in a few curt bows that are so half-hearted they’re hard to see as anything other than a mockery of the traditional Japanese show of respect.

The audience has obviously had enough, as its startled silence quickly turns to jeers. Webbe’s hearing doesn’t appear to be any better than his sense of “comedy,” though, and he keeps going. Nakamoto visibly realizes there’s no way Webbe is going to pipe down and tries to wrap things up, simply saying “Thank you to everyone,” which Webbe takes as his cue to say “Arigato.”

Finally, after shouting something in a fake Japanese accent, Benji finally quiets down and the audience gets to hear the rest of what Nakamoto has to say.

Considering how unassuming Babymetal’s members are when interacting with fans and the media, quite a few of the band’s supporters took issue with Webbe’s actions, which boil down to picking a fight with a group of teenage girls. In response, Webbe apologized on his Twitter account.

Granted, Internet etiquette is a young, and still evolving thing, but yeah, it seems like common sense that if you want to apologize to Babymetal through Twitter, it’s pretty easy to do directly, seeing as how the band has an official Twitter account. Which, incidentally, is followed by more than 20 times as many people as Webbe’s.

Speaking of the Babymetal Twitter account, the band has made no comment there about the incident, as it’s too busy thanking everyone who was part of the massive turnout for its performance in Paris.

In other words, it looks like Babymetal figures it may as well let the real baby have his bottle.

Source: Livedoor News via Hachima Kiko

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