Electric Callboy

I’ve been sharing a lot of heavy stuff lately, so here’s a break from that.

Last weekend I went to Vancouver with some friends to see Electric Callboy in concert. They’re a German band who’s music is a combination of metalcore and EDM, two of my favourite genres. A majority of their songs follow a similar formula in which they begin like a fun, hype electronic song and then unexpectedly pivot into heavy metal with aggressive screaming. I absolutely love it. They have a collection of music videos that contributed heavily to their boost in worldwide popularity. The videos are ridiculously hilarious. The band has no problem making absolute fools of themselves.

I was introduced to the band and their videos by a friend last summer and my appreciation of their music has grown over the past year as I’ve listened to them more and more. When that same friend asked if I wanted to see Electric Callboy in concert I couldn’t have given a more enthusiastic yes! Five of us met up for the show. We got to the venue about forty-five minutes before the doors opened, spending that time chatting in line and looking at all of the people walking around. Most of the fans looked like stereotypical metalheads: piercings, tattoos, and all black clothes. But there were quite a few “regular” dressed people like me who couldn’t be easily put into a specific category and, to my surprise and amusement, there were a number of people dressed up in costumes from the music videos. I first noticed a guy in line not too far behind us who had that horrible mushroom cut from the “We Got the Moves” video. Then I saw a whole group of seven with mushroom cut wigs, white shirts, and bright yellow pants. They looked like absolute dorks. It was awesome. There were a few groups dressed in neon, 80’s workout gear too. This was from the “Pump It” music video. And at one point I spotted a woman in a unicorn onesie, referencing the song “Unicorns” which has the most absurd chorus. It’s hard not to laugh at a grown man screaming “I’m a goddamn unicorn!”

My friends and I made our way to some seats to the right of the stage. The venue was general admission only so we could go wherever we wanted which I was thrilled about. I like to dance at concerts and I hate assigned seating. I knew I would want to be down on the floor for Electric Callboy, but I was happy to sit for the opening bands. Scene Queen was the first opener. I’d never heard of them. There was a drummer, a guitarist, and a singer. The singer was a cute, curvy, blond woman in a short, pink dress with a flared skirt. She started the first song half singing, half rapping with a high, girly voice. And then she screamed. My god that girl could scream. Her deep, demonic voice caught me totally by surprise. I immediately cheered, as did the rest of the crowd. The juxtaposition of the Barbie-ish visual and the deep growls was exactly the sort of thing I’d expect at an Electric Callboy concert. I wasn’t a big fan of her style of music but she put on a very entertaining show.

The next opener was Polaris, a band from Australia. I’d never heard of them either. Their sound was what I would consider classic heavy metal. They really got the crowd going. A mosh pit formed on the floor and I watched in excited fascination as dozens of people thrashed around and aggressively smashed into each other. I’d never been in or seen a mosh pit before. Mostly it was chaos. But sometimes the singer brought some order. Or as much order as you could get from a mosh. “Alright, I want everybody to split right down the middle,” he demanded at one point, motioning with his arm to mime slicing through the crowd. I was bouncing in my seat. I knew what was coming. I’d heard of this. The wall of death they call it. “Everybody back up, back up,” the singer shouted. The crowd willingly obliged, each half pushing out to the left and right sides of the floor to leave a wide gap in the middle. The song was picking up, approaching the drop. “Get ready!” Oh, I was fucking ready. And then all hell broke loose. The beat dropped, the singer screamed, and the two halves of the crowd sprinted directly into one another, colliding violently. It was awesome. A song or two later, the singer had everyone do a thing called a circle pit. The moshers formed a circle and then ran counter clockwise, absorbing more and more of the surrounding crowd as they went. It was hard to tell how many people were joining by choice versus by force. Probably a lot of them just got sucked in and had no choice but to run with the group. And on top of all the moshing and circling and wall of deathing, there was probably someone surfing the crowd every couple of minutes. I couldn’t get enough of watching some guy get hoisted up and passed over the heads of dozens of people, floating towards the front of the stage and into the arms of the waiting security guards. I needed to get down there!

After the opening acts, I left my friends and the safety of the seats and made my way onto the floor. The crowd was dense and I have an intense discomfort around being in people’s way. Usually I avoid crowded areas as much as possible because the continuous feeling of being in the way often triggers anxiety attacks. But this was Electric Callboy, and god dammit I was going to get into that mosh pit! I wormed my way through the path of least resistance, often following other people and taking advantage of their more agressive movements. I settled for a spot roughly in the centre of the floor. I was still much farther from the stage than I wanted to be but things were getting really tight and it was wearing on me to push past so many people. After ten minutes or so of waiting, the show began. The venue lights dimmed. The stage lights glowed bright, illuminating the only thing to see which was a giant curtain that read “Electric Callboy” in small letters at the top and “Tanzneid” in giant letters that took up the entire rest of the space. Tanzneid was the name of the tour and the name of their upcoming album and the first song they’d released from it. There was a low, ambient rumbling. Then the first five notes of Tanzneid played, the lights flashing along with them. The rumbling grew slightly louder. The crowd whooped and cheered and began to clap out a steady beat. I clapped with them. After several seconds, the five notes played again. The clapping began to pick up speed. The rumbling continued. The clapping sped up to the point that it just turned back into regular, unsynchronised applause. The music played again, this time a little louder and with a few more notes. The lights flashed again. Everyone cheered even louder. I was almost in tears I was so excited (I cry with literally every strong emotion. It’s kind of embarrassing, especially at a metal concert). The ambient rumbling got louder and faster. The synth notes played again and again. The lights flashed brighter. The crowd screamed. I screamed. Everything was ramping up. My heart was pounding, my eyes were watering. And then there was that familiar bass drone that simulates something shutting down. That deep drop in pitch while all other sounds stop. I don’t know how better to describe it. But it’s the moment when you know shit’s about to go down. For a fraction of a second, the crowd held their breath. Well, actually, they kept on screaming. But I held my breath, and I’m sure figuratively we were all holding our breaths.

And then the song started, though nothing on stage had changed that I could see. Nico’s beautiful voice filled my ears.

“I seek the motion, I can feel it beat in...”

For a second, I wondered if they were all standing out there and I was just too short to see. But no, that couldn’t be right. Nico sang the next couple lines of the intro and then Kevin came in with his growling screams, the music crescendoing with his voice.

“Gimme gimme, yeah, I’m gonna cut the fucking ROPE!”

And the rope indeed was cut. The curtain dropped to the floor, revealing the band standing behind it, dressed in the hooded, puffy vests from the Tanzneid music video. The crowd, myself included, lost their fucking minds.

I needed to get closer. The people around me were nowhere near hype enough. I was full of excitement and adrenaline, and the band sure as hell was matching my energy. I needed the crowd around me to match that energy too. It took several songs, but I finally gathered up the courage to plunge deeper into the swarm. I squeezed my way around body after body. Everyone was already so tightly packed, but I was determined to make it to the mosh pit. Finally, I could see them. Just ahead was the chaotic mess of flailing bodies. Men and women jumping around, crashing into each other, shoving each other, dancing and thrashing and screaming. This was exactly what I was hoping for. I shoved past the last few human obstacles and finally joined the pit. It was absolute chaos. All I could see were flashes of backs and arms and chests as I was spun all around. One person hit me from the right, another shoved me from behind, I bounced off the person in front of me, then fell into the person beside me. It was all I could do to stay on my feet. I felt like a rag doll in a hot, sweaty hurricane. It was a blast.

The moshing wasn’t constant. Its energy matched the music. When the singers were talking to the audience we all stood still and listened. When the next song started the head bobbing began. But when the beat dropped, when the heavy parts kicked in, that’s when we jumped around and started to riot. At one point in my uncontrollable ricocheting, someone’s head smacked me straight in the nose with a sickening crunch and a sharp pain. I had a moment of dread. No, don’t tell me I’m bleeding. I just got here! The last thing I wanted was to leave the mosh pit. Let my nose be broken, who cares. But please, don’t let there be blood. I checked it repeatedly for the next five minutes. Not a drop. And I the bone seemed firmly in its natural place. Phew! Lucky me, I got to keep moshing.

About halfway through the show, right when a song was just starting, there was a small gap in front of me and a guy who probably weighed almost double my weight turned and charged right at me. He wanted to mosh and I was in his way. I froze, not that I really could have moved anyway. He barrelled into me and sent me flying backwards. I bounced off someone, got hit by someone else at a different angle, and the conflicting forces tripped me up, causing me to fall flat on my back. I think I even slid across the floor a bit. But mosh culture is surprisingly supportive and caring, and the same guy who’d initially charged me immediately reached down and dragged me to my feet. I slapped him on the back in thanks and we both jumped right back into the action.

At one point in the show, the drummer did a long, epic solo while the rest of the band took off for a costume change or something. All eyes were fixed intently on the stage. When he finished and the cheering had started to quiet down, the voices of Nico and Kevin filled the room from somewhere off stage. “So, we actually snuck out into the crowd while you guys weren’t looking,” Kevin said in his thick German accent. I spun around and craned my neck. “We’re waving. Can you see us?” came Nico’s voice. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were fairly close. They asked all of us on the floor to sit or kneel so that everyone could see. I still couldn’t really see, because a bunch of people right around them refused to sit for who knows what reason, but I could see enough to know they were standing right where I had been at the start of the show. Damn. Kevin had a keyboard that he’d brought out and the two guys played a slowed down version of “Fuckboi,” one of my favourite songs by them. Then they went into a slow version of their cover of “Every Time We Touch.” After a verse or two and a chorus, the rest of the band was back on stage and had joined in. The singers ran back to the stage, security parting the crowd like Moses parting the sea, and then they went into the hype version of the song that all of us fans know and love. And that was our cue to start the mosh yet again.

Some time during the encore, in which Electric Callboy played about five songs, the hurricane mosh spat me out right at the front of the stage. There were only three people separating me from the band. Despite being continuously shoved from behind and pinned against the guy in front of me, I was having the time of my life. A couple songs in, they started “Elevator Operator.” Within seconds, a guy in a big fur coat and silver pants appeared above me. I reached up to help pass him along to the front. As he was gently thrown into the arms of security Nico spotted him and excitedly shouted, “there he is!” For the fur coat and silver pants were indeed the Elevator Operator’s costume from the music video. Nico ushered him on stage and the guy immediately began dancing around excitedly. Every band member took turns giving him a hug and I cheered extra hard. What a lucky bastard. After a minute security rushed him off stage, though not because he was being at all disrespectful or destructive.

Electric Callboy ended the show with one of their biggest hits, “We Got the Moves.” During the song a bunch of streamers were shot out over the crowd and immediately got stuck in the rafters. I didn’t even know anything had happened until Kevin commented on it and I turned around to look. “Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s do a group photo!” The band posed at the front of the stage while everyone in the crowd raised their hands. I made sure to lift my left hand so that my white watch would hopefully help me distinguish which arm was mine when they posted the photo. And then after a few final thank yous and goodbyes, it was over.

As everyone filed outside, I walked back towards my friends with the biggest grin. I couldn’t have been happier. I experienced my first ever mosh pit, got as close as I could to the stage, and I got to watch two full hours of one of my favourite bands playing their hearts out. It was such a fantastic show. The energy in that place was exactly what I’d hoped for and I knew the excitement would stay with me for a long time. That show will definitely be a highlight of 2026 for me and I’m so grateful I got to go.