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Babymetal, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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BABYMETAL
+ Diamond Construct
@ Fortitude Music Hall,
Brisbane,
4th March 2025

Review and photos by Alec Smart

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Babymetal, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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Babymetal, the Japanese ‘kawaii’ metal band, performed at Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane, supported by Australian metalcore four-piece Diamond Construct from Taree, NSW.

Kawai – which translates from Japanese as ‘cute’ – is a pop culture aesthetic, founded in the 1970s and typically associated with cuddly toys, pink hearts, a childlike innocence, pastel colours, cartoons featuring big eyes, and femininity. It gained global recognition in 1974 with the Hello Kitty brand of clothing, toys and accessories aimed at pre-teen girls, and was later embraced by J-Pop (Japanese popular music).

Kawaii metal, while it adopts the cuteness factor, in contrast to J-Pop the music is heavy and dominated by distorted guitars, powerful drums and punctuated with digital samples and growling vocal noises.

However, unlike traditional heavy metal, which tends to be male-dominated and celebrates dark themes of horror, death and rebellion, kawaii metal lyrics are generally light (albeit occasionally Gothically menacing) and the choruses simple and catchy. They cover topics such as food, family affairs and often give practical advice to youths approaching adulthood.

The Fortitude Music Hall event was a sideshow for the 2025 Knotfest, a celebration of metal and hard rock music at Brisbane Showgrounds two days previous.

The concert took place just 24 hours before venues, schools, offices and public transport closed due to the impending arrival of Tropical Cyclone Alfred – the first high strength cyclone to impact south-east Queensland since March 1974.

Babymetal, a trio of three young Japanese women backed by the Kami Band, hit the stage like a cyclone – or typhoon, the Asian equivalent. With a tsunami of dynamic music performed with tightly choreographed dance moves, they were mesmerising and the audience sang along rhapsodically. (More below.)

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Diamond Construct, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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Metalcore band Diamond Construct, support at the Fortitude Music Hall event, might have seemed an unusual choice as the night’s openers, especially considering the all-ages show crowd consisted of a high proportion of young teenaged girls, many dressed in black, wearing thick-soled boots, their hair in pigtails, in a homage to their Babymetal heroes.

Undeterred, Diamond Construct barrelled onto the stage with a surplus of enthusiasm and soon warmed the crowd up with their hybrid metal-rap-electro set of originals.

The band, centred on brothers Braden and Kynan Groundwater (guitar and vocals, respectively), with bandmates Adam Kilpatrick and Will Mills, have released three studio albums, Event Horizon (2016), Diamond Construct (2019) and Angel Killer Zero (2024) and an EP, DCX2 (2020).

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Diamond Construct, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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Diamond Construct, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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Their music, although under the abrasive umbrella of metalcore – metal and hardcore punk fusion spiced with slow breakdowns and punctuated by frequent death growls – also ranges from death metal to rapping to electronic dance music (‘EDM’).

Hyper-mobile front-man Kynan’s vocals range from guttural growls – like a bear regurgitating a lost trail walker – to high-pitched singing that one might expect from Justin Timberlake.

At one stage Kynan tried to divide the crowd like Moses’ Biblical parting of the Red Sea, perhaps with the intention of creating a ‘wall of death’ (a form of moshing which sees the audience separate into two halves that then runs and slams into the other). However, the high number of teenage girls among the spectators determined that this was not going to happen.

Watch Diamond Construct‘s most recent music video, Jynx, below.

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After the lights were dimmed, the Kami Band, a black-clad quartet wearing horned silver horror/Devil masks, took up their place at the rear of the stage while a narrator declared the transcending nature of the human triptych that is Babymetal.

The music started, 2 guitars, drums, and a six-string bass, then eventually three young women – the trio at the heart of Babymetal – skipped out into the arena and grinned, like Cheshire cats in the dim light, at their appreciative audience.

Looking resplendent in black skirts and tops flecked with luminous colours, they began a series of synchronised triangulated dance sequences that entwined martial arts moves with more conventional sways. This high-energy coordination continued with relentless precision – they are very well rehearsed – but between songs there’s no chatter. Instead, lights are dimmed and the trio get into position for the next manic dance pattern.

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Babymetal, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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The crowd sang ‘happy birthday’ to Momoko Okazaki – it was her 22nd birthday the previous night – one of two backing vocalists whose role is described as “scream and dance”. She is known to fans as ‘Momometal’. The other two members have similar stage names: lead vocalist Suzuka Nakamoto is Su-metal and second “scream and dance” backing vocalist, Moa Kikuchi, is Moametal.

During the second song, Su-metal calls for the formation of a dance circle in the audience moshpit, but most of the crowd is more interested in filming the stage spectacle on their mobile phones.

Several of the songs start with Japanese words projected on the large screen behind, which the audience are encouraged to chant. The screen is otherwise used to display a spellbinding video weaving anime characters, the trio performing pre-recorded dance moves, psychedelic patterns and other visual distractions.

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Diamond Construct, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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Prior to their sixth song, Megitsune, one of six singles released from their debut album Babymetal, the audience were encouraged to switch on the torches of their mobile phone and hold them aloft, so that the theatre resembled a mass candlelit parade.

Megitsune, originally released with an energetic dance video and the Kami Band behind wearing fox masks, introduced the whole fox persona that is at the core of Babymetal’s aesthetics.

Megitsune is a compound word merging kitsune (fox) with mesu (female) – and describes a cunning human female that is like a vixen. Japanese folklore heralds foxes as clever but changeable, and in the context of human behaviour, deceptive.

Babymetal’s song challenges this notion by declaring society expects women to be actresses, but if a man feels disillusioned or deceived by them, he should not feel that their charm was duplicitous.

The lyrics state “The idea of what makes an ideal woman is changing. Smiling with our faces, crying on the inside. Saying ‘that’s right’ and never showing our tears. Women have always been actresses. We’re not foxes. Maidens are not to be underestimated, a women’s fate is to blossom and then fade. Smiling with our faces, crying on the inside. We’re pure-hearted maiden-like vixens.”

Babymetal have adapted the ‘sign of the horns’, the traditional hand symbol of metalheads, and replaced it with a similar kitsune/foxy hand gesture that they frequently utilise in their dance moves, which their fans have enthusiastically copied.

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Ichinose Hana flashing Kitsune symbol from Slow Start anime

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The ‘sign of the horns’ raises the first and forth finger like devil horns, whilst the second and third middle fingers are tucked into the fist and held down by the thumb. Historically, this was popularised in heavy metal culture by singer Ronnie James Dio after he joined Black Sabbath in 1979. Dio was inspired by his Italian grandmother, who, in traditional Latin Catholic culture used this ‘malocchio’ (‘evil eye’) as a supernatural sign to ward off malevolence.

Babymetal replaced it with the Kitsune/fox sign from Japanese folklore, which similarly raises the first and fourth fingers, like foxes’ ears, but extends the two middle fingers outwards to resemble a fox-like snout.  (Read a summary of why they adopted it here.)

Ironically, the fox face hand symbol is identical to the wolf salute used the Grey Wolves, a hard-line nationalist-fascist-Islamic Turkish group that has been associated with terrorist incidents dating back to the 1970s.

Bremen, a city in northern Germany banned its use in July 2024, after Turkish soccer player Merih Demiral flashed it with two hands aloft to celebrate scoring a goal in the national squad’s 2-1 defeat of Austria in the Euro Cup.

It would be interesting to see how German police enforced that ban when/if Babymetal perform in Bremen and the fans salute their heroes.

The aforementioned sporting incident led to a diplomatic quarrel between Germany and Turkey and resulted in Demiral being served a two-match ban by UEFA, the football governing authority.

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Babymetal, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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During Babymetal’s eighth song, Ratatata, which featured video clips of the helmet-clad Electric Callboy (the German electronicore duo Kevin Ratajczak and Nico Sallach with whom they recorded the May 2024-released music video), the audience were encouraged to squat down.

Then, when everyone was calmly resting on their haunches, they were all urged to leap in the air, which caused much mirth.

The band finished their set in Brisbane on Gimme Chocolate, their best-known song from their debut album, which became a surprise international breakthrough hit in 2016 even though it wasn’t initially released as a single.

After audience demands for an encore, Babymetal returned with Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!. The bizarre music video for this song is centred on a girl who gets drawn into heavy metal music after praying to a dark female entity. A box appears before her from which she removes a mysterious collar, which unexpectedly wraps around her neck. Then she’s in the sudden grip of surging fast speedmetal music and begins headbanging (aggressively nodding her head back & forth, the common form of dancing in heavy metal culture).

During the night’s finale, Road of Resistance, from their 2016 album Metal Resistance, the trio waved flags emblazoned with the band’s logo. Then the mesmerising musical cyclone that is Babymetal departed the stage.

Meanwhile, outside, businesses were placing sandbags on their doorsteps to halt rising floodwaters of the Brisbane River, in anticipation of the forthcoming Tropical Cyclone Alfred…

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Babymetal, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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History

Babymetal was initially created in 2010 by Key Kobayashi, aka Kobametal, a Japanese music producer for Amuse talent agency, who recruited Suzuka Nakamoto, Moa Kikuchi and Yui Mizuno, with Momoko Okazaki as a backing dancer, all members of previous Amuse-formed teen girl pop band Sakura Gakuin (Cherry Blossom Academy).

Lead singer Suzuka had also fronted another Amuse agency band, Karen Gāruzu (Karen Girl’s). Yui left in Dec 2017 with undisclosed health issues and in April 2023 Momoko was announced as her full-time replacement.

However, despite the core trio being initially assembled and directed by a talent agency, and none of whom had a background in heavy metal music, they have since evolved, both pioneering and defining the kawaii genre and achieving global respect.

They’ve also performed on stages alongside heavyweights like Metallica, Slayer and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and collaborated with major influencers, including Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine + Audioslave), DragonForce, Electric Callboy and Taiwanese metal band Chthonic.

Babymetal now headline metal festivals and their influence has spawned a plethora of similar bands, including the infamous Ladybaby, a Japanese band fronted by Australian wrestler and stuntman Richard Magarey, who cosplays as ‘Ladybeard’ in a dress, mascara’d eyes and his hair in pigtails.

Set List

Babymetal Death
Distortion
Da Da Dance
BxMxC
Metali!!  (preceded by KAMI Band solos)
Megitsune
Monochrome
Ratatata (Babymetal & Electric Callboy cover)
Pa Pa Ya!!
Gimme Chocolate!!

Encore

Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!
Road of Resistance

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Diamond Construct, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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Follow BABYMETAL
Website – Facebook – Twitter
Instagram – YouTube – Spotify

Follow DIAMOND CONSTRUCT
Facebook – Instagram – Spotify
Videos – Apple Music

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Fans of Babymetal light up their mobile phones. Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, 4 March 2025. Photo: Alec Smart

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AMNPLIFY – DB