METALVERSE Trivia — 15 Entries
15 sourced facts about METALVERSE.
Trivia
METALVERSE first appeared in front of an audience on somebody else's stage. Three unidentified lifeforms simply turned up partway through BABYMETAL RETURNS -THE OTHER ONE-, the comeback shows BABYMETAL played in January 2023, and a live report in THE FIRST TIMES describes them as reading like a mirror image of the headliners. The same three showed up again that April at BABYMETAL BEGINS -THE OTHER ONE-. No name and no music had been attached to any of it, so what the audience made of it was left to the audience.
The three names became public more than two years after the first appearance, in the middle of the opening number of the third headline show — METALVERSE #3 - GARDEN OF EDEN, at Spotify O-EAST on 9 May 2026. A live report in Gekirock describes the moment: partway through Welcome to the METALVERSE the elements on the screen turned into three names, SAKIA, COCONA and MIKO, and the room cheered. As of February 2024 the members had been as thoroughly unnamed as the music had been unreleased.
In August 2026, after both acts played the BABYMETAL-curated SONIC "METAL" STAGE at SUMMER SONIC 2026 in Tokyo, they sat down together for Rolling Stone Japan. Midway through, MOAMETAL asked how the younger group had first come across metal. All three of METALVERSE answered: BABYMETAL. BABYMETAL's own reaction was that it is startling to meet a generation for whom that is the answer. SAKIA said they were still very much learning about metal, and turned the question round — what is metal to BABYMETAL?
The first announcement about METALVERSE went out on 7 July 2023, and it carried two things at once: a first appearance at SUMMER SONIC 2023 in Tokyo, and a first headline event called METALVERSE#1 - UNBOXING. The official wording promised a METALVERSE phenomenon that summer, on a world-line separate from BABYMETAL's. Only buyers of an NFT called METALVERSE ELEMENT could enter the earliest ticket ballot, and the announcement said plainly that buying one guaranteed nothing.
The sentence METALVERSE uses to explain itself has not changed between the first announcement in 2023 and the film tie-in announcement in 2026: there are as many stories as there are fragments of METALVERSE, the fragments are called ELEMENT, and the cast and the content keep changing. The word runs through everything the project sells — merchandise, NFTs, even a ticket type — and on stage the ELEMENTs have appeared not only on screen but as physical objects lowered from above.
GIZA, released to streaming services on 8 May 2026, was the first official recording METALVERSE ever put out. For roughly three years before that the only audio the group had published anywhere was the live music videos on its YouTube channel; there was no studio recording at all. The music video that arrived the same day was also the group's first shot in a studio, and the official announcement describes the song as the heaviest thing in their repertoire — darkness in ordinary chaos, and the thread of light that leads out of it.
Crazy J is the song METALVERSE calls swing metal: a big brass sound borrowed from big-band jazz, with Charleston steps folded into the choreography. It became the group's first live music video on 21 February 2024, on the official YouTube channel. In METALVERSE #2 - THE END OF THE INNOCENCE, the show the footage came from, it appears twice — second in the main set and last in the encore — the only song of the ten to be played more than once. The second live music video, Naked Princess, followed about five weeks later on 29 March.
METALVERSE VΛND PROJECT, launched in March 2026, spells band as VΛND. The idea is that the players standing behind the three members change from show to show, and the official announcement calls it a dream girls band drawn from a new generation of artists. At METALVERSE #3 - GARDEN OF EDEN on 9 May the four were HAL-CA (guitar, of ASTERISM), Li-sa-X (guitar, of KOIAI), Yunika Impact (bass, of Kakumei Meloik and KOIAI) and Fuwawa (drums, of Kakumei Meloik).
METALVERSE headline shows carry a ticket type called Z-VERSE: a restricted-view seat at half price, for anyone from primary-school age up to 22. The official wording says it is aimed at the members' own generation. It cost 4,000 yen against a general 8,000 at METALVERSE #2 in February 2024, and the same 4,000 against the same 8,000 at METALVERSE #3 in May 2026. Restricted view means parts of the stage or the production may be hard to see; ages are checked at the door for the buyer and anyone with them, and nobody 23 or over gets in on one.
The opening theme of GROTESQQQUE, the original animated film released nationwide in Japan on 6 November 2026, is a new METALVERSE song called Shoot Shoot Shoot. Atsushi Nishigori directs, writes and designs the characters; CloverWorks animates. The film is built from three pieces with entirely separate settings, and the opening theme's job is to tie those three into a single viewing. Speaking to Rolling Stone Japan, MIKO said it had never occurred to her that this was a job her group would end up with.
The first stage METALVERSE played under its own name was the MOUNTAIN STAGE on day two of SUMMER SONIC 2023 in Tokyo — and in the opening-act slot, first thing in the morning. Nobody had been told who the members were or what they would play. THE FIRST TIMES reports that the roughly 20,000-capacity stage filled up anyway. The following week the group played its first headline shows, two nights at Spotify O-EAST in Tokyo billed as METALVERSE#1 - UNBOXING, and sold out both.
GIZA had been in the live set for more than two years before it became the first single. It sits sixth in the setlist of METALVERSE #2 - THE END OF THE INNOCENCE, played over two nights at Toyosu PIT in Tokyo on 10 and 11 February 2024, and THE FIRST TIMES describes it there as down-tuned riffs over a trap rhythm. Premiering songs with no recordings behind them was simply how the group operated in this period: three more of that night's numbers — Get Down, Endless World and Naked Princess — were also being heard for the first time.
Asked in the same Rolling Stone Japan conversation what METALVERSE's own strength is, the three said they are still looking for it. SAKIA put it as wanting to build a style of their own and not being there yet; MIKO said she hoped they would find it from here. The only concrete thing any of them named as the appeal of metal was SAKIA's answer: the sheer physical pressure of the sound. This was three and a half months after their first release and before any video release had been announced.
Talking to Rolling Stone Japan alongside Ave Mujica, SAKIA described what the three of them do right up to the last moment before a show: not only settling the fine points of the staging, but deciding what frame of mind to walk out in. On the Summer Sonic day the two questions they settled were whether to play to the crowd or to the cameras, and whether to lead with the dancing or with sheer force. MIKO said the answer that day was to aim at the people seeing them for the first time.
Watching METALVERSE at Summer Sonic, BABYMETAL's MOAMETAL told Rolling Stone Japan that the solo dance sections caught her off guard, because BABYMETAL's own shows have nothing like them. She also pointed at the rotating band: building a show through collaboration means having to do something new every single time, and she reckoned the pressure of that is considerable. It is visible in the record of the 9 May METALVERSE #3 show, where the opening of Naked Princess hands a solo to each of the seven people on stage in turn.