Metal music tends to be pretty ridiculous. The rapid drumming, the costumes, the growling lyrics about death – it’s so ridiculous but, so much fun. So what happens when you take this genre and make it even crazier by adding three female Japanese pop singers? You get possibly the most enjoyable two hours of your life in the form of BABYMETAL.

A little background on the group. BABYMETAL is like if ABBA wanted to sing for Gwar – bringing both sides of the spectrum together – bubblegum pop and death metal in one act. They’re fronted by 18-year-old SU-METAL, along with 16-year-olds YUIMETAL and MOAMETAL. The female vocalists are backed by a four-piece band dressed in white robes and white painted faces. Visually, this is what the children of The Joker and Harley Quinn would look like in a stage show.

And what a stage show it is. While most metal music tends to be pretty hard to understand from all the growling lyrics, BABYMETAL are difficult for another reason…they sing in Japanese. Obviously, that didn’t stop the sold out crowd at The Fillmore in Detroit from singing along to roughly 400% of the lyrics. They LOVED this band and it’s easy to understand why after experiencing BABYMETAL perform live. The conventional wisdom would say a Japanese metal band with pop singers wouldn’t have a following in a place like Detroit, but they absolutely did.

It was shocking to notice the sheer diversity amongst the crowd. All the stereotypical metal fans were there, dressed in mostly black from head to toe, but joining them was every other walk of life. Totally different ages, races, and styles, it was a rainbow of people, like a bag of Skittles…speaking of candy…

The highlight of the night was BABYMETAL performing their most well known song, “Gimme Chocolate“. As soon as it started, a deep roar came from the audience, the kind of roar that says, “I know this song. I love this song. Let’s mosh!” During the chorus, the singers (FeMETALS?) asked the audience if they would join in and sing. For a bit of extra incentive, MOAMETAL and YUIMETAL (Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams to SU-METAL’s Beyonce), ran out with giant Snickers and 3 Musketeer bars to throw out to whomever sang the loudest. This obviously caused the crowd to lose their minds and reach new volumes with their roars, and it caused a giant smile for all of us to wear the rest of the night.

If you thought metal was ridiculous and fun before, BABYMETAL takes it to another level!