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Electric Callboy’s rise remains one of metal’s most fascinating transformations. Over the last few years, the Germans have gone from metalcore oddballs with a love of early 00s club anthems to Download main stage arrivals, collecting viral hits and collaborations with Babymetal along the way.
The catalyst was 2022’s Tekkno, an album that turned a novelty act into one of metal’s hottest properties. It leaves Tanzneid with a sizeable challenge: proving lightning can strike twice.
Fortunately, the album arrives with all the subtlety of an air horn, doubling down on everything that has carried Electric Callboy this far. The title track, translating to ‘dance envy’, erupts in a rush of electro trance hooks and brutal riffs like a brawl in a Berlin nightclub at 3am, but its secret weapon is a chorus so shamelessly infectious it could have been lifted from a forgotten Eurodance classic.
Hypercharged and Elevator Operator lean into EC’s gift for turning the sort of trance pop nonsense that once filled Ministry Of Sound compilations into bona fide festival anthems. Hypercharged opens with the cartoonish energy of Aqua’s Barbie Girl before slamming the accelerator through the floor and disappearing into a whirlwind of guitar riffs, clubland excess and clean-sung choruses.
Meanwhile, Elevator Operator is gloriously daft, pairing rubbery synths and rap metal bounce with a chorus that feels like a TikTok dance craze waiting to happen. It’s the sort of hook most bands would be embarrassed to write and most would kill to have.
And that’s the thing about Electric Callboy: beneath the breakdowns, strobes and Euro-silliness lies some genuinely elite songwriting. Even boyband pisstake The Way You Are and the breezy The Offspring collab Let The Good Times Roll reveal a knack for melody rarely found in metalcore. Babymetal prove equally at home on Ratatata, whose collision of kawaii metal and electronicore absurdity has already become one of the band’s defining songs, earning it Metal Hammer’s 2024 Song Of The Year crown.
Tanzneid isn’t all giant hooks, however. Heartclub is the album’s heaviest detour, trading EDM fun for blunt-force trauma, while Revery wraps its heaviness in the atmosphere of a dark fairytale. The Saviour and a cover of Sum 41’s Still Waiting keep the momentum high, while the remixes feel more like an afterparty.
If there’s a criticism, it’s that Tanzneid occasionally feels more like the culmination of an era than a fresh chapter. Much of its strongest material – including Ratatata, Elevator Operator and the title track – has been circulating for months or even years. Still, familiarity isn’t the same thing as fatigue. The closing remixes underline how deeply dance music remains embedded in Electric Callboy’s DNA, while the album as a whole feels like a celebration of everything they’ve become.
Tanzneid may not represent a dramatic reinvention, but it doesn’t need to. Few bands have spent the last five years turning irreverence into such a potent creative and commercial force. Electric Callboy once looked destined to become nothing but a joke. Instead, they’ve become one of modern metal’s biggest success stories.
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 416, August 2026. Order your copy now, with an exclusive Electric Callboy cover and numbered art print, via the Louder webstore.
Tanzneid is out on Friday (August 7) via Century Media. Electric Callboy tour Europe from January to March.
