BABYMETAL. The group that consists of three cute girls, being SU-METAL on lead vocals and MOAMETAL and YUIMETAL as background vocals. On 5 and 6 June, they played at Ronda, a hall of brand-new concert venue TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht. Both shows sold out pretty much instantly online during the pre-sale of the tickets, and on the days themselves, people were queuing in front of the venue since early in the morning already.
A lot of people were queuing since early in the morning. The type of people was very varied. From young till old, people who dress up to normal metalheads. Everyone interacted with each other, either they know each other or not. The hall was split into two, the top and the bottom. The bottom is where you can interact with the performing band. The doors of TivoliVredenburg opened around 19:00, and everyone very very excited immediately. People got in the venue little by little, some instantly making their way to the merchandise area to buy something, others quickly going to the concert area itself to secure a good spot for themselves before having conversations with the ones around them and sometimes even singing together.
The show itself didn’t start until 20:15, but before the main act, there was another band opening up for them: DREAM STATE. Everyone in the audience was screaming, jumping, singing, and of course as you can expect with most “heavy” concerts a mosh pit formed sooner than later. During the end of their set the singer started to stagedive, but when they finished and left the stage the real excitement started within the audience as they knew the next act to take the stage would be BABYMETAL.
At exactly 21:00 the curtains fell down. A short video played in Japanese with English subtitles. The moment the video finished the curtains went up again and SU-METAL, MOAMETAL and two backup dancers became visible. The girls were wearing different outfits than they usually do (normally they wear a black shirt with a red skirt), this outfit being fully black with gold rims. They all wore masks and held a staff in their hands, standing there for about a minute before the staffs were put aside and the masks were taken off to play their first song of the evening. The moment they started playing “Distortion” on the stage, a new moshpit started in the audience.
There was very little fan interaction aside from SU-METAL would point her microphone towards the crowd. She’d walk to the left- and right sides of the stage, but not very often. With YUIMETAL being absent the backup dancers were there to make up for the open space, and they did quite a good job doing so. They even had their own moment in the spotlight where they would dance in the middle of the stage by themselves with a choreography that looked like they were fighting each other.
For fans familiar with BABYMETAL the absence of YUIMETAL was quite obvious, but it seemed like the crowd was going at full power after all.
Setlist:
01. IN THE NAME OF
02. Distortion
03. Elevator Girl
04. Tattoo
05. GJ!
06. Akatsuki
07. Megitsune
08. Gimme Chocolate!!
09. KARATE
10. Road of Resistance
11. THE ONE
