Holy shit. Japanese Metal Bands (featuring mostly women)

I haven't really listened to much "new" music in years.  And by "new" I don't mean the "latest greatest", I just mean "new to me".  I discovered The National a few years ago thanks to my friend Bert, and prior to that I think it was The Decemberists or maybe Bon Iver.  So I am pretty set in my ways when it comes to music.  I'm also extremely picky.  For whatever reason, most music just doesn't connect to me that well.

So a few weeks ago I was looking for some music that was like powerful, inspirational, and like... violent?  I dunno... I was thinking something.... metal?  I'd never really been into metal before despite an old internet friend trying his damndest to get me into it. I mean Stratovarius was OK and Bal-Sagoth was.. at least interesting, but I never really got into it.  The one metal song that really grabbed me was Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce, which I heard for the first time as the "bonus" track on Guitar Hero 3.  And that was SORT OF like what was looking for.  

I searched up Dragon Force to see what genre of music it was (there are innumerable metal genres).  Turns out it was Power Metal.  Wikpiedia had a handy list of Power Metal bands and on the list was the name Aldious, which was an all-woman power metal band.  I didn't listen to Aldious right then, but it reminded me of a band I'd seen an article on years ago called BAND-MAID.

The article was in Kotaku or something and it was about a Japanese metal band where all the members were women and wore maid outfits.  I remember watching the video at the time and being impressed that all the members seemed to be good at their instruments, but for whatever reason it didn't quite grab me at that time. But I remembered the article when I saw Aldious and I decided to give them another try, and I found this song:

https://youtu.be/Uds7g3M-4lQ?feature=shared (sorry, apparently they don't allow embedding)

For whatever reason, this time, it really clicked with me. Like it went beyond "oh cool, they can play their instruments" to "holy shit... this is... really... good?".  I ended up listening to a ton of their stuff and there were... many.. good songs.  Domination, Dice, Don't let me Down, Daydreaming, From Now On...

I was totally hooked, but I saw a blurb about a late 2000's/early 2010's Japanese Female Metal scene.  So I looked up "Japanese Female Metal Bands", and holy shit.

There were.... many.  I listened to Aldious and I liked it but it didn't totally connect at first.  Then I heard LOVEBITES.  Holy shit.   What a band.  Like an all-woman Japanese Dragon Force, and incredible live:

This led me to BRIDEAR, Mary's Blood, TRiDENT, Telecide, NEMOPHILA, and even bands like BRATS.

Overall this is probably the most bands I've discovered I liked since I was in my early 20s.  It's really amazing, and a bunch of it is the exact type of thing I was looking for when I started, inspirational metal.  BAND-MAID is really more hard rock than metal, but it still has face-melting solos and incredible drumming.  I don't really know the point of this blog post, except to share this amazing discovery with whoever might see it.

I'll leave you with one more video from NEMOPHILA, a song which cemented my love of the band and Japanese Women-led heavy metal.