“Choo choo.“
Electric Callboy shot to notoriety off the back of their hit song “Hypa Hypa” back in 2020, with the video now stacking a staggering 26 million views on Youtube. It was seemingly a fun, bold, catchy and risky move that has evidently paid off deep into the formerly-controversial band’s career. It put the German unit more on the map than any of their numerous releases previous, and has seen them to continue to reap praise and awards over the past two years. Following singles such as “PUMP IT” have reached similar heights, with the music video even winning ‘Best Video‘ at the most recent Heavy Music Awards. This now leads them into TEKKNO, which sees them pursuing the format that has propelled them into the spotlight.
Blending in power metal with modern metalcore brings us to the famed and aforementioned album opener “PUMP IT“. Peppered with the most boring and monotonous breakdowns that return like a ghost from the early 2010s of metalcore, with synthwork about as creative as a child’s drawing “PUMP IT” is anything other than the good time it’s touted to be. There is a real compression to the production, with everything sat at the front of the track, making it an even more tiresome listen than it already is. “PUMP IT” feels like an attempt to recreate the magic of “Hypa Hypa” rather than trying to create anything interesting or worthwhile, which results in a track that is far less fun or substantive than its predecessor.
One of the two features on the record includes Michigan’s Conquer Divide, titled “Fuckboi“, which feels like a cheap rip off of the sort of angle Machine Gun Kelly went for (and not in a positive way), with the Conquer Divide feature adding little to the track other than it being a slightly more palatable listen. The track’s bridge descends into a trap verse, which goes in the opposite direction of what Conquer Divide‘s vocalist Kiarely Castillo has done best across their most recent singles. Following this comes the second feature involving Finch (not the good Finch) on “Spaceman“, with the feature bringing in a drum and bass element to the record, proving to be a disjointed effort to combine the two. And yes, there is another one those breakdowns. Yawn.
Most recent single “Hurrikan” is introduced with nice Schlager music, before descending into mindless, for the sake of it heaviness that really does nothing beyond that, while it does perhaps show some solid deathcore screams, that does very little to redeem it. Outside of the already-discussed tracks which were released as singles, there is little substance to TEKKNO, which is packed to the brim with uninspired, recycled riffs that fail to captivate. There is little attempt to even touch on the elements that had got them popular in regards to the entertaining hooks and beats that people were pulled in by. Instead, there are countless mind-numbing breakdowns that have been heard aplenty over the years, alongside the most painfully amateurish metalcore riffs.
TEKKNO brings two questions in to the fold, one being a wider perspective on what ‘fun‘ music is within the genre, and what Electric Callboy even hoped to achieve with this record. TEKKNO is potentially viewed an antidote to the serious side of genre, which allows listeners to let loose and have a laugh. Although, there are plenty of bands such as Turnstile, The Armed and even Pintglass which offer music that has a light-hearted or even outwardly humorous side, who do it without such cringe-inducing elements. Across TEKKNO is Reddit comment levels of humour, mixed in with shoe-horned in B-sides that add little to the record other than to pad out its already lean runtime. It’s a lazy, inexcusable and shoddy attempt at an album that tries to provide the best of both worlds, but fails miserably to do so.
“Hypa Hypa” turned out to be a hit most importantly because it was the band having fun, the energy of which seeped through the music itself. The following attempts to replicate it are merely just that: a replica of their golden moment, failing to achieve the same heights. It’s truly disappointing, mostly because there still are hints of that short-lived glory, yet it instead delivers blatantly shoddy metalcore mixed with half-baked Eurodance. Given my disappointment with TEKKNO, I wish I hadn’t heard and gotten my hopes up with “Hypa Hypa” at all.
2/10
TEKKNO will be available this Friday, September 16th, via Century Media Records, and you can pre-order it here.