BABYMETAL Announce U.S. Tour With Avatar

Japanese pop-metal group BABYMETAL are really revving up in 2019 already. Just this week, the band released their new song, Elevator Girl, off of their long-awaited new album. Now, they've also announced a series of U.S. tour dates -- and they're taking power-groove clown metallers Avatar along with them.

The shows kick off this September in Floria, and head up the East Coast before looping down through the midwest and back up into California. Make sure to bounce on the balls of your feet until your brain hurts at one of the following tour dates:

September 2019

04 - Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock Live
06 - Atlanta, GA @ Coca Cola Roxy Theater
08 - Washington, DC @ Anthem
11 - Boston, MA @ House of Blues
13 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore
15 - New York, NY @ Terminal 5
18 - Detroit, MI @ Fillmore
20 - Chicago, IL @ The Aragon Ballroom
21 - St. Paul, MN @ The Myth
23 - Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater
24 - Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom
27 - Denver, CO @ Ogden Theater
28 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Union Event Center
30 - Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues

October 2019

01 - Tempe, AZ @ The Marquee
04 - San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield

For those of you who missed it, here's BABYMETAL's Elevator Girl:

Speaking to Kerrang! about those who dismiss Avatar's public image as a gimmick, singer Johannes Eckerström said, "I absolutely do not care for those who look at it that way. If we release an album that is truly awful, everyone else can move on and never think about it again. Only five people in the world need to live with it forever.

"On the surface people see a guy dressed as a clown and if that doesn’t suit expectation, it’s easy to call it a gimmick," he continued. "That’s thinking skin-deep. But it’s not a gimmick to us. Like with Rammstein, Tool or Slipknot, the visuals fit. The same goes for Foo Fighters. I see them as a visual band too, it’s just that their music sounds like jeans and T-shirts.”

Read this next:

• The 10 moments that made Babymetal global superstars
• Avatar's Johannes Eckerström: The 10 songs that changed by life
• The 10 greatest metal songs with a saxophone