Album Review: Electric Callboy - 'TANZNEID'
After the raving global reception of previous release TEKKNO, there were a number of avenues for German group Electric Callboy to contemplate exploring. Would they change things up a bit more? Would they take a break and savour the success a little longer? Instead, they chose to do the secret third option: to take TEKKNO and make it bigger, better and more badass than ever imagined. Enter TANZNEID.
With a title that literally translates in English as ‘dance envy’, it’s a given that this will be the band’s further exploration into binding the trademark metal sound with electronic and pop elements to make this either the funkiest dance record or the heaviest metal record they could possibly form. One of their first releases for the record was ‘RATATATA’, a collaborative effort with Japanese rock trio BABYMETAL, and as the second track following on from the title tune, it was always the first impression of this new and improved era. A wonderful up-and-down blend of bouncy pop sounds and shredding guitar riffs, it’s a rollercoaster from start to end. The juxtaposition of the lighter melodic vocals from BABYMETAL with the rough and tough gutturals from Electric Callboy gives this song an all-round feel of pleasing all audiences without pandering or mismatching qualities that would lead to a too-many-cooks situation. The levels are calm, and the amounts are just right; and this is only the beginning.
The record also features a collaboration with pop-punk longstays The Offspring, titled ‘Let The Good Times Roll’. Similarly with ‘RATATATA’, the balance is there and it works to bring each act’s strengths to the piece: the heavy-set electro beats expected on the album being influenced with the more traditional rock elements brought by the featured band.
Electric Callboy often gives praise to the bands that came before them in the alternative scene, and this is just one instance of these tributes. The title being based on The Offspring’s 2021 record Let the Bad Times Roll, and the lyrics including the utterance of “uno dos tres, quatro cinco cinco seis” - a line made famous in the world-famous hit ‘Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)’ - this is a love letter of sorts to the pop-punk past that paved the way for experimental acts and brand new sounds and styles. It’s all a chain reaction, and certain bands will bring the birth of others later on; Electric Callboy is that child who ran because their ancestors walked.
Closing the record with a mosh-worthy cover of Sum 41’s ‘Still Waiting’, the semi-anthemic retro earworm that is ‘The Savior’, and the atmospheric storytelling end track ‘Revery’, TANZNEID has achieved what it was aiming to. The hype, the power, the applied influences and inspirations, they have come together to respectfully continue where TEKKNO left off back in 2022.
“TANZNEID is built for the stage”, is a promise that was given by the dance-metal outfit, and it’s one that has been kept and then some. If this is what their future live appearances are looking to sound like, then here’s hoping the floorboards are nailed and the walls are reinforced, otherwise the roof is flying off and the sound is flooring the entire world and beyond.
Get those hearts racing, get the adrenaline pumping, and get on the dance floor. It’s time to inflict some TANZNEID upon civilisation.
Words by Jo Cosgrove
