Archive for the ‘Babymetal’ Category

Babymetal Invites The Warning To Festival Gigs

Posted: May 24, 2026 in Babymetal, Best of Trinkelbonker, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, Japanese rock & metal
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Babymetal has the honor of being curators of the Metal Stage(s) at the Japanese Summer Sonic festivals in Tokyo and Osaka in mid August. They will, of course, headline these nights themselves, but they have invited some interesting names, first and foremost The Warning from Mexico. This is a huge deal and maybe they have been collaborating on a new song in secret that is about to pop up? That would actually be pretty nice. In any case, it is a huge sign of respect for the Mexican trio to be invited to share that stage with them. Among the other acts are Pentatonix, Ave Mujica (another female band from Japan that I need to get into) and openers Metalverse. Band-Maid are also performing at Summer Sonic, but on the Pacific Stage. Now they have actually already collaborated on a song with The Warning, so something might happen there for sure. Babymetal has performed at Summer Sonic many times. The first year was 2012, when they played at a very small stage in the food court area. They were 13 (Moa and Yui) and 14 (Su) at the time and it went down well. In 2013 they moved to a bigger stage (The Rainbow Stage, and this time they created a mosh pit). Members of Metallica and photographer Ross Halfin checked them out. In 2014 and 2015, they rocked The Mountain Stage and in 2016 they headlined the Osaka Sonic Stage and also three other main festivals in Japan (Fuji Rock, Rock In Japan and Rising Sun Rock Festival). In 2017 the co-headlined the Main Stage with Foo-Fighters and in 2018 they headlined the Mountain Stage again, then we had a gap until 2023 (Metal Stage) and since then they have performed in 2024 (as special guests with Bring Me The Horizon) and in 2025 as headliners again. Needless to say, they have a spectacular history with this festival. As for The Warning, they dropped a new video for a song called “Ego” on YouTube the other day. Good stuff.

(Backdrop shot was taken by me yesterday, love that cat)

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Giza

Posted: May 9, 2026 in Babymetal, Best of Trinkelbonker, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, J-Pop, Japanese rock & metal
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The Babymetal franchise “sister group” Metalverse released a new video called “Giza” yesterday, and it is a decent enough song. The track is released in digital format only so far, like previous songs that has been dropped. This will probably change soon. Also, they perform at the Spotify O-East in Tokyo tonight with more gigs coming up. It helps when they get to open for Babymetal every now and then as well, they are obviously being groomed for bigger things to come.

(My Babymetal live shot, Metalverse screenshot from “Giza” video inserted – no malice intended)

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Frozen Horizon 6

Posted: May 7, 2026 in Babymetal, Best of Trinkelbonker, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, Deep Purple Family, Hobby, Japanese rock & metal
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Babymetal has a couple of tunes on the new Forza Horizon 6 game (“Gimme Chocolate” and “White Flame”, Su-metal will receive some additional royalties for writing the lyrics for the latter). The music of Babymetal is popping up all over the place. As a matter of fact, Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi gifted some Babymetal (and other Japanese music) to her colleague in Australia, Anthony Albanese recently. Sanae was a guest on the Babymetal radio show a while back and talked about her love for metal music and her having been in a metal band as a drummer once. She mentioned her love for drummer Ian Paice of Deep Purple which went viral at the time (being shared even by Purple on their social platforms). This would later lead to her meeting Deep Purple in Japan a few weeks ago, which also made quite a splash in media.

(My live shot of Babymetal, Forza box art is from official platforms)

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Hot Magazines

Posted: May 4, 2026 in Babymetal, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, Deep Purple Family, Hobby, Japanese rock & metal, Lovebites, Magazines
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Some good stuff in the new issue of Young Guitar (6 2026) in Japan, including features on Deep Purple, Lovebites and Empress. And in the upcoming issue of UK publication Metal Hammer (413, June issue), we have a feature about how Babymetal conquered the world with “Gimme Chocolate”, among other things. Nice.

(Covers seen here are from official platforms, my background shot)

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Framed Babymetal Poster

Posted: May 4, 2026 in Babymetal, Best of Trinkelbonker, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, Framed Posters & Stuff, Hobby, Japanese rock & metal
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This is a huge Babymetal Tower Records Shinjuko poster from the “Megitsune” single days in 2013. When I started to collect stuff in 2017 I used to see these posters on eBay and at one point I decided to go for this one, which is very cool. Before I moved to where I live now in 2018 I had it properly framed. I now have it in one of the music rooms in the house. Thinking back, this was probably the first poster project of this size that I went for and there has been plenty of them since. Makes this place a nice one to dwell in. I do have some regular paintings etc, but most of it is stuff like this, that covers my cultural preferences.

(My shot of said poster)

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Glory Days

Posted: May 3, 2026 in Babymetal, Best of Trinkelbonker, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, DVDs & Blu-rays, Hobby, Japanese rock & metal, Lovebites, Nemophila (band), Roselia (band), Saki (guitarist)
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Yesterday I invited a neigbour over and once the tour of the house was over I showcased some live stuff from my Japanese DVD/Blu-ray collection for him to see a bit of the modern Japanese scene. Regular guy, has listened to all kinds of music including rock since (I would guess) the early 1970s. Lo and behold, he liked all of it (Band-Maid, Nemophila, Roselia, Lovebites, Babymetal), thought it was fresh and interesting. I have said it before and I say it again, the Japanese scene is still largely untapped, and the potential here is huge. In a sane world, everybody would be aware of these bands. Well, this party ain´t over yet.

(My shot of the Nemophila Budokan DVD, also seen here are some screenshots with said artists)

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Yuimetal

Posted: May 2, 2026 in Babymetal, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, Framed Posters & Stuff, Hobby, Japanese rock & metal, Magazines
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Since I am making a point out of showcasing framed stuff now on the blog, here is an image of Yuimetal from back in 2016 (UK publication Kerrang!). This was before I discovered Babymetal, I catched up in a big way starting back in 2017.

(My shot of said framed page, Yuimetal shot by Susumo Miyawaki)

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Still Out Of Touch

Posted: May 1, 2026 in Babymetal, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, Japanese rock & metal, Lovebites, Magazines
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It is hard to find a positive word about the Japanese scene in Sweden Rock Magazine. I mean, I think they are doing a good job in general, but Japan is really not on the map. First they spent years gatekeeping Babymetal (I have got the reviews), so they missed out on that key historic development and played no part at all in helping them establish the good reputation here that they now enjoy (they still have to write a feature on them, and I actually offered to do it for free back in 2017). Nobody has written about the incredible scene that is ongoing in Japan, giving the readership the general overview that is well overdue at this point (so many bands that deserves to be highlighted now, the scene at large certainly is). This trend of ignoring what is going on now is still there. In the recent issue Lovebites is half dismissed, which is fine. It is one guys opinion. I see no historic context though, like the fact that this band sold out the Budokan a few weeks ago (which was known well in advance). The reader that is not aware of Lovebites might think that it is just one band of many and not that they are actually (outside of Babymetal, that is a whole thing unto itself) the leaders of an incredibly exciting scene that is rising fast. No malice intended to the magazine or the writer here (friends of this blog know that I am hyping SRM fairly often), I just feel personally that it would be nice if they could put things in context at this point.

(Cover seen here is from official platforms, inserted review is from SRM 4 2026 – “Outstanding Power” is released on May 8 over here)

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About This Blog

Posted: April 30, 2026 in About this blog, Babymetal, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, Deep Purple Family, Hobby, Japanese rock & metal, Tommy Bolin
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I added a short post titled “Good Company” on the blog a few days ago and I later went back to it and gave it its own tag, “Best blog post here ever”. There are way more important posts here for all sorts of reasons but this one still has that special something, that positive spark that I feel that music in general has always given to me. I hope that people that are curious will find it uplifting, and that it will highlight the general spirit of what I am doing here. Having said that, the biggest post this week has been the Europe “1986” post. Good traffic for that one. I never know if a post will take off or not, but it is interesting to take it all in.

(My shot of the April 26 post)

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Poppy

Posted: April 29, 2026 in Babymetal, Classic Rock, Cool stuff, DVDs & Blu-rays, Hobby, Japanese rock & metal, Kanade Sato (drummer), Magazines, Music (general), Nemophila (band), Roselia (band), Saki (guitarist), Sixiwanzi (band), Zilqy (band)
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I enjoyed the Poppy feature in Metal Hammer 412 (May 2026 issue). She popped up on my radar (for real) when she worked with Babymetal recently, and she has a great deal of charisma. I would not mind seeing her live some day. Another interesting piece is the take on the metal scene in Thailand. It would be a natural thing to highlight the current Japanese scene in a similar way. Lets shine some light on Hagane, Nemophila, Saki, Koiai, Empress, Zilqy, Coven Japan etc, and why not Sixiwanzi from China? The magazines that are not on the ball at this historic point in time are losing credibility fast. I am grateful for the coverage of Babymetal, Lovebites and a couple of other outfits, but we now live in the age of a gigantic Japanese phenomenon and an explosion of talent. The Internet is alive, I see people go crazy on how good the scene is every day.

(My shot of said issue, Poppy cover shot by Hector Clark – inserted live image is a screenshot from the Babymetal “Live At The O2 Arena” DVD)

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