Written by Saturday July 5, Sonisphere Festival 2014. A huge crowd has gathered in front of the mainstage to witness metal’s equivalent to the moon landing: Babymetal’s first UK performance. The video for Gimme Chocolate!!, their viral, shock-to-the-system breakthrough single had already racked up millions of views online – it would hit 4.5 million a month later – and there wasn’t one person on the field that day who didn’t have feelings about it.
Some were excited. Some were openly repulsed by the concept of hyperactive J-pop mixed with super-heavy industrialised metal, fronted by three teenagers performing synchronised dance moves. Most were simply curious to see if there was anything more than a very effective gimmick going on.
Backstage, the band’s original lineup of Su-Metal, Moametal, and Yuimetal, dressed in black, silver and red net tutus were anxiously waiting in the wings.
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“I could only see a crowd of people with stern expressions,” recalls Moametal. “I remember I took a deep breath. My in-ear monitor went silent. Crossed-armed figures stared at us. Bottles sailed toward the stage.” She laughs. “Looking back, I’m amazed my younger self even stepped out there!”
I could only see a crowd of people with stern expressions
Moametal
Babymetal’s set was a five-song whirlwind introduction to a bonkers new world. As the girls twirled and danced through nailed-on choreography, backed by the razor-sharp firepower of The Kami Band, the insanity and charm of it all gave way to the giddy euphoria. Babymetal had arrived.
“Most people just had their jaws on the floor,” remembered Sonisphere promoter Alan Day, speaking to Hammer in 2021. He had immediately booked the band after seeing the video for Gimme Chocolate!! “Initially, I had them playing the tent, but it soon became clear that it’d be dangerously packed if we did that. So, we managed to free up a slot on the mainstage, and it’s the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen for a set in the afternoon.”
Babymetal were put together in 2010 by Japanese talent agency Amuse Inc, as part of a school-based, idol girl group called Sakura Gakuin. The group was made up of a revolving door of 10-15 girls who would “graduate” when they left school. It also featured mini “sub-groups” referred to as clubs. Babymetal’s core trio of Sakura Gakuin (Su-Metal), Yui Mizuno (Yuimetal) and Moa Kikuchi (Moametal) made up the ‘heavy club’.
The trio released two solo singles as part of Sakura Gakuin; Doki Doki Morning in 2011 and Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!! in 2012. While the nascent band spent a few years performing to backing tracks, they struggled to be taken seriously as a metal band. It was when they brought in The Kami Band – a group of talented session musicians who could play the songs live – in 2012 that the Japanese rock press finally ‘got it’ and their distinctive style began to emerge.
When Su-Metal graduated in 2013, rather than just replace her, the band’s producer and mastermind Kobametal decided to turn them into their own distinctive act and they began writing songs for a debut album. Gimme Chocolate!! Was a clear stand-out, a catchy hit that fused the cuteness and futurism of J-pop with the warp-speed and virtuosity of power and classic metal. Yet, once you get over the sheer madness of it all, underneath the adrenaline-soaked layers there’s a deeper message, as the lyrics pick at body issues faced by young people all over the world.
“Atatata taata taatatata zukkyun,” does not make sense even for me,” laughs Su-Metal, remembering her reaction to the lyrics when Kobametal first played her the song. “But the choreography is comical and very catchy so that everyone wants to dance along. The lyrical content is also about everyday life: ‘I want to eat chocolate… Do I gain weight if I eat it? Oh well, I worked hard today, so I’m just gonna eat it.’ Comical lyrics mixed with cool sound. That makes this song very unique.”
It didn’t hurt that nobody had seen anything quite like Babymetal before Gimme Chocolate!! took over the internet. Uploaded to YouTube on February 26, 2014 – the same day the band’s self-titled debut album was released in Japan – the video remains their most arresting and recognisable visual statement. Not only did it introduce the girls’ now iconic red tutus, which they wore throughout their early live appearances, it’s the video with their most memorable choreography too, cutesy movements jarring against juggernaut guitars.
The choreography is comical and very catchy so that everyone wants to dance along
Su-Metal
Twelve years on, they still perform the same dance moves, aware of their important place in the story.
“I’m committed to preserving the originals,” admits Moametal. “ If I change even one small thing, I feel like I might start compromising. I never want to do a show like that. The ‘Atatatata—ta!’ part feels heavier on my body now than it did back then, but I still do my best to make it look light and effortless. There’s also a moment before the call-and-response section where the three of us face each other and dance in a circle. We always make eye contact and check in with one another, and that has become one of our little secret highlights of the performance.”
A mere twenty-two days after Sonisphere, Babymetal flew out for their first US shows, including five nights supporting pop megastar Lady Gaga on her ArtRave: Artpop Ball Tour. God only knows what her fans made of it, but on a grainy, sound-compressed video taken at the Phoenix US Airways Center and uploaded to Youtube, Gaga herself can be seen bouncing, headbanging and punching the air to Gimme Chocolate!! in the front row.
“Everything was so freshly new,” remembers Su-Metal. “I was excited to learn that our music actually works globally! We can connect with people worldwide through music, transcending language barriers. Our world kept expanding before our eyes.”
“I was still in elementary school then, and offers from countries or areas I’d only seen in textbooks felt totally unreal,” adds Moametal.
Things continued to move quickly. Within a year they’d played a secret set at Download, joining Dragonforce onstage for an unrehearsed, souped-up version of Gimme Chocolate!! and won the award for Best Breakthrough at the Metal Hammer Golden God Awards. Oh, and just to keep that count fresh in your mind – by the end of that summer, the video for the track had hit 25 million views on YouTube.
But for every fan who had just discovered their new favourite band, there were plenty of purists bursting blood vessels over Babymetal’s mere existence. Everything from the band’s dance moves, to the fact the girls had never listened to metal a day in their lives before joining up, sparked a fierce debate about whether the music was or wasn’t metal, and if an explicitly manufactured band could ever be taken seriously.
We were just kids who didn’t know what ‘authentic’ metal was supposed to be
Moametal
“We were just kids who didn’t know what ‘authentic’ metal was supposed to be,” considers Moametal. “We jumped into the metal world without knowing what ‘normal’ was, so we just believed that this was the path everyone had to take. Having people fire unfamiliar words at us, even when we didn’t understand the meaning, was really frightening.
“But in hindsight, I think the adults around us were probably more worried than we were. Those scary memories from back then are still deeply engraved in me, so I always think about treating the next generation of artists with as much kindness as I possibly can.”
“They are a band that didn’t exist before,” says Kobametal, of the backlash. “Whenever a new type of sound appears in the metal scene, it’s always criticised, but then they overcome that criticism and become something big.”
As enamoured as they were in the moment, there were probably very few people, if any, on the field at Sonisphere 2014 who thought Babymetal would become a genuine part of our landscape, as natural a fit on festival bills as Iron Maiden or Metallica. But today, Babymetal are bigger than ever. They’ve worked with some of the world’s biggest metal bands, and stacked their fifth album, 2025’s Metal Forth, with a who’s-who of modern metal acts including Electric Callboy, Poppy and Spiritbox.
In May 2025, they headlined a sold-out London O2 Arena, the first Japanese group to not just headline the venue, but sell it out. Their status as potential future festival headliners looks assured. Oh and that view count for Gimme Chocolate!!? It currently sits at 216 million and the track remains a key moment in Babymetal’s live set.
“No matter what country we perform in, the moment the “GIVE ME…” intro plays, the crowd erupts,” says Momometal, who joined the band as a replacement for Yuimetal in 2023.
“Even now when I’m told the song became a phenomenon, my reaction is still ‘Wow, really?” says Moametal. “I never set out to revolutionise metal. If you asked me whether this single release transformed metal entirely, I’d still say, ‘No.’ That said, we’ve recently collaborated with musicians who discovered metal through this song, which fills me with immense gratitude! When your song becomes someone’s gateway moment… That’s genuine power for a group.”
Taken from Metal Hammer #413. Babymetal play Download Festival Saturday June 13
