Electric Callboy: 'We tried something very new, something that's not popular with German metalheads"

There's something in the water in Castrop-Rauxel. The former coal-mining city in Germany's Ruhr region might not immediately spring to mind as a breeding ground for internationally successful metal bands, but it as certainly made its mark.

For Electric Callboy, the electronicore outfit who have transformed their distinctly chaotic blend of metal, techno and outrageous humour into a global phenomenon, it has the perfect place to get started.

"Castrop-Rauxel's slogan is 'Europastadt im Grünen,' which translates as 'Europe's city in the green'," explains vocalist Kevin Ratajczak. "We do have an industrial background, but it's an area where a lot of bigger coal-mining cities are very close together. All of it together is the Ruhr area. It was the perfect scene to grow up in. We had youth centres in every city and local bands organising gigs."

"The cool thing about all of this," adds fellow vocalist Nico Sallach, "is that the distances from city to city are so short. Even when you're young and you don't have a car, you can get from Gelsenkirchen to Bochum, or from Bochum to Castrop."

That close-knit network of towns and cities provided fertile grounds for a thriving underground scene. Electric Callboy found their feet among the local bands, gradually building a following before eventually becoming one of the biggest acts to emerge from the region. Along the way, however, they went from watching their own musical heroes take to the stage to finding themselves player higher up the bill.

Ratajczak recalls one particularly surreal moment at a German festival. "We had grown quite big in Germany at that point, and we played after Silverstein. I talked to [lead vocalist] Shane and was like, 'You guys are my fucking heroes. It doesn't feel natural to have you play before us."

Sallach has experienced a similar feeling. "Story of the Year are one of my favourite bands. They had a pretty early slot compared to us, and I was like, 'How on earth?"

It's a measure of just how far the band have travelled. Their 2022 album TEKKNO reached No.1 on the German album charts, while their latest release TANZNEID, also topped the German and UK Rock & Metal Album Charts. Yet, for a band whose identity is built around doing things differently, even choosing an album title can become an adventure.

"Our label actually told us not to pick that name because nobody's going to pronounce it correctly!" laughs Ratajczak. "The German language sometimes sounds very harsh, and TANZNEID is a harsh word."

In fact, it's not even a conventional German word. The idea came from German actor, Uke Bosse, who plays the titular elevator operator in the band's video of the same name.

"He came up the idea," explains Sallach. "We were standing in an elevator, waiting for the crowd to finish their dancing so we could get the shot. He was standing next to us and said something in German that basically translates to, 'I'm envious of them - I want to dance with them.' We loved the sound of the word and just let the idea grow into what TANZNEID could mean."

The resulting concept - roughly translated as 'dance envy' - captures that feeling of watching everyone else have a good time while you're doing something considerably less exciting. "You're locked in front of a table because you have to study for the next exam, and everybody's going out at the weekend for a party," says Sallach. "You're sitting there being envious about that. That kind of feeling."

It's fitting that a band capable of developing an album concept while filming a music video would have such an unpredictable creative process. Electric Callboy have made a name for themselves by combining crushing metalcore and electronicore breakdowns with a knowing sense of absurdity. Their videos are frequently as important to their identity as the music itself, with elaborate concepts, outrageous costumes and a willingness to take things to their most ridiculous extreme.

Just look at 'RATATATA', their collaboration with Japanese kawaii-metal sensations BABYMETAL. Bringing together two acts with distinctly theatrical approaches to heavy music, the track was an explosive meeting of worlds. "We moved ridiculously, as always," laughs Ratajczak. "But the girls...we were absolutely amazed the first time we saw the choreography."

The band have learned that getting their visual ideas might require a hands on approach. "The good thing is that our guitarist Pascal [Schillo] has a company and some very good people who can do video shoots. We usually work with the same people. We can be the creative minds, sit around a table throwing out ideas, and the they put that into reality."

That creative freedom has allowed them to experiment with sounds that might initially seem an unlikely fit for a metal band. One of the most entertaining examples is their flirtation with schlager - a style of European pop music characterised by catchy melodies, sentimental lyrics and upbeat, danceable rhythms.

On TANZNEID, Electric Calboy take that familiar sound and gleefully turn it on its head with 'The Way You Are'. "We thought it would be a really good idea to write our own schlager song, but we didn't want it to end in a way people would expect."

The track opens with the sentimental melodies you'd associated with a classic boyband, before descending into something considerably heavier. It's accompanying video begins as a nostalgic late 90's pop fantasy before taking a gruesome turn.

The idea was inspired, in part, by their love of the boyband era. "Fast-forward to 2026 and we started writing a boyband song,' Sallach explains. "We are totally in love with the whole 90s boyband era. The Backstreet Boys came back and started playing shows, which got us hyped. We knew from the first minute that this song wasn't going to end like a normal boyband song. We wanted it to be similar to 'Hurricane', our last schlager song - but even heavier and harder."

Naturally, bringing that vision to life involved getting messy. "Kevin has a good tolerance for these kind of things, but I was on the verge of puking a couple of times," Sallach admits. "We had real meat in front of us, a lot of fake blood, combined with fruits and everything you can imagine."

 

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"You misinterpreted my behaviour," interjects Ratajczak. "I was aroused to see you soaked in blood." He quickly returns to the more serious business of explaining the shoot. "The blood was the bad part, but it was a lot of fun to perform. You know that feeling when you're dressed up to party and it starts to rain? You try to avoid the rain, but at some point you're soaked and you don't care. That's what the video was about - letting go."

It's a philosophy that extends well beyond their music videos. Electric Callboy's live shows are equally theatrical, combining their relentless energy with an increasingly ambitious production. For a band who have built their reputation on spectacle, however, there's an important distinction between putting on a great show and simply hiding behind the fireworks. "If you're trying to be a good live band, you have to be at least acceptable, or as good, without the lights and pyro," says Ratajczak. "It's a question of the budget. As we grow bigger as a band, we can throw more money into it and make it bigger. We're pretty much moving the same as we did years ago, but now there's bang, and boom, and whoosh!

"The good thing about it is that its distracting people so much from the fact that we're getting older and we can't move like we could ten years ago."

• Tickets for Electric Callboy at 3Arena, Dublin are available here.