Decided to satisfy my morbid curiosity considering we had a whole argument with a fan of this band on this forum. WEW LAD.
Now, there is a laundry list of things that I really dislike about the album. The vocals become progressively grating over time, the production is quite sterile, the added effects are annoying, some of the instruments sound bland and are produced terribly, etc. However, I noticed that one aspect of the praise that this particular album received was that each track was involved in a different metal subgenre which gave the album more variety. That said, I don't really believe that it's a strength in the case of Metal Resistance. In fact, I think it's the album's crippling weakness. Each song feels like a pale facsimile of whatever subgenre it's attempting to emulate. Road of Resistance is a generic power metal track (with Japanese pop idol vocals), Tales of the Destinies is a poorly-conceived and rather shallow progressive metal track (with Japanese pop idol vocals) and so on. For a band that is so often lauded for its "eccentricity", the actual music is pretty derivative.
Really, the band's success overall kind of disappoints me as well. The Japanese metal scene is a pretty interesting one to look into and spans many subgenres with different interpretations on them and given some of the favorites that I've discovered, Babymetal's success is mildly insulting for the last reason I stated in the previous paragraph. I mean, why listen to Babymetal's dull take on power metal when you can just listen to a band like Galneryus, Aion or Concerto Moon instead? Why listen to Tales of the Destinies when you can listen to Alhambra or Saber Tiger? Why listen to any of the thrashier tracks on this album when you can listen to late Sabbat or Gargoyle instead? Why listen to Babymetal's overproduced and grating take on traditional metal when you can just listen to the superior X Japan, Anthem and Loudness instead? That's the kicker. This group manages to be a total superfluity in both the Japanese idol "genre" and Japan's metal scene.
A lot of the criticism against the band is often shrugged off as misguided conservatism but this thing taken fully on its own merits after listening to the whole thing, it's still just bad. A mediocre idol group in a sea of mediocre Japanese idol groups with a wasted backing band.