Century Media Records
Release: 24 March 2023
Words by Greg Walker
I didn’t even mean to catch Electric Callboy at the Brisbane date of Good Things Festival in December; it was an accident I swear! Shoehorned between two bands I wanted to see, they weren’t even a curiosity, they just happened to be there before Lacuna Coil. Clearly, I’d been living under a rock because the extent of their crowd took me completely off guard. Eternally popular Cosmic Psychos had a packed Stage 3, but just as Electric Callboy were coming on we did a scan behind us and there were literally thousands of people waiting, fully aware of what we were about to witness.
From the opening Pump It Up it was a bombastic adrenaline-charged party rave straight up rocking out from go to whoa. The moment they hit the stage their show was flat out and the frequent costume changes were entertaining, but the level of audience involvement blew me away. Standing back from the stage, we often couldn’t hear the band very clearly over the noise of the fans singing along word for word to catchy and bouncy chorus after chorus.
Half their set featured highlights from their 2022 album TEKKNO, a title which only half describes the contents. With enough pop tinge balanced with a chunk metal guitar tone to appeal to a wide range of tastes, it’s an eclectic mix of all sorts of pieces of Rammstein, Static-X, Orgy, Dope, infused with Nu-Metal rap stylings and even djent sounds in places. Not content to be a blend of metal genres, Electric Callboy also lean heavily on pop and EDM, all woven into big rock anthems. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does and makes complete sense, and is total entertaining fun.
The TEKKNO album is as fun as the live show, jammed packed with giant singalong choruses and punchy riffs galore. The material is tailor-made for audience participation, packed with party soundtracks like the aforementioned Pump It, as well as other fellow singles We Got The Moves, Spaceman (feat. FiNCH), Fuckboi (feat. Conquer Divide), and Hurrikan. Hurrikan has a brutal, almost metalcore ending, and peppered throughout the rest of the album are big chunk moments like the silly but muscular “choo choo” breakdown moment in Tekkno Train. Non-single highlights include personal favourites Mindreader and closer Neon.
What are the lyrical themes? Electric Callboy’s usual scope of partying alongside a load of not-so-cleverly disguised innuendos; the inferences are blatant even in passing, the tongue-in-cheek fun is over the top when you realise this music isn’t meant to be taken seriously, it’s an entertaining escape that directly translates to Electric Callboy’s shows.
This is not any sort of intellectual metal, or is it? Despite being cheesy at times and almost embarrassingly sugary, the material is well constructed and purposefully driven, packed with memorable riffs and catchy choruses. Although the song structures are obviously designed to encourage audience participation, it does become formulaic without becoming overly repetitive within the confines of TEKKNO’s short 30-minute runtime, but there’s enough variation in that timeframe for me to give this aspect a pass for now.
Having said all that, it really is difficult to pick a low point on the album.
With all this in mind, Electric Callboy see fit to release the upcoming TEKKNO (Tour Edition), updated now to include five bonus live tracks recorded on their sold-out 2022 European tour. The live experience I described above is truly captured in the recently released clip We Got The Moves (Live), especially at the 2:30 mark. Through each of the bonus tracks the crowd can be heard over the live sound, demonstrating the infectious effect the band clearly aimed for in their song structures. There’s no doubt this band is made up of talented musicians, it would be interesting to hear them construct some more serious music, but then again what they’re doing is clearly working for them – this really is addictive music accompanied by a phenomenal live show.
If I had to say something negative, I’d go with this: I’m really not averse to the use of profanity to convey emotion in lyrics, I’m not, but I feel Electric Callboy could’ve achieved the same effect without it. It feels unnecessary in achieving their end goal, the result would’ve been the same without, however, if that’s truly the case then I suppose why not.
Tour Editions of already released albums can be seen as a cash grab by the record label, striking while the iron is hot after a successful sold-out tour such as Electric Callboy’s recent jaunt. However, collectors and new fans have a chance at holding something a bit more special, and these bonus tracks on TEKKNO (Tour Edition) are a nice addition to the excellent party soundtracks already available.
