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Babymetal Confused The Hell Out Of Americans Last Night With Their Debut TV Performance

Sam Moore

“I’m not sure what I’m about to see,” began Stephen Colbert, to giggles from his studio audience. “But I’m pretty excited about it!”

The Late Show host was right: he, along with most of his American viewers, had very little clue about what they were about to witness with the musical segment of last night’s show. But then again, there isn’t much that you can say about Babymetal prior to laying eyes upon their unique stage show for the very first time, for seeing really is believing. Twitter user Katsuki Baekugo called it:

In case you’re not entirely up to speed with the rapidly-advancing Babymetal phenomenon, then don’t worry – watching them perform their breakthrough single ‘Gimme Chocolate’, which has just the 45.3 million views on YouTube, should serve as a fine introduction to their utterly bonkers yet furiously-addictive style. And so, without further ado, here’s how they went down on The Late Show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZApf9c8Tes

Yup – pretty full on, right? The sight of Babymetal’s three vocalists – Su-metal (Suzuka Nakamoto, 18), Yuimetal (Yui Mizuno, 16) and Moametal (Moa Kikuchi, 16) – performing dance routines and upbeat melodies against the backdrop of a water-tight four-piece metal backing band really is something that you need to take in with an open mind.

Some Late Show viewers, however, didn’t adopt this policy of broad-mindedness; pulling out their phones to register their outrage on social media at what they’d just seen.

Kristi took it particularly terribly.

Like, really, really terribly.

Even Colbert was in a state of shock following the performance, as Babymetal fan @JessKarpinski testified:

But not everyone in the US hated it – the band even inspired a few young Americans to pick up their instruments:

Bofo perhaps summed the whole experience up best, though:

Case closed.