Review Summary: An incredibly cheesy and inconsistent album – but a fun time nonetheless.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Electric Callboy doesn’t take themselves very seriously. As a band, their focus is entirely on producing bouncy, upbeat tracks that all come served with massive slabs of cheese.
Tanzneid, despite suffering from consistency issues, is no different, and the album actually managed to get a few genuine laughs out of me on my first listen. For example, the entire concept of
Elevator Operator is ridiculously silly, but you can’t deny how infectiously catchy the song still is.
Just The Way You Are is hilarious as well, beginning as a very on-the-nose parody of 90s boybands like N’Sync and Backstreet Boys before taking a hard right turn and unexpectedly becoming what is likely the heaviest song on the entire album, only to close in the exact boyband style that it opened with. Even the less funny songs on
Tanzneid are still remarkably cheesy, but in ways that don’t detract from their overall quality.
Hypercharged has some very eye-roll-inducing lyrics in its chorus (“Never give up / Never give in / Ready to fight when the beat is kicking in”) but the up-tempo, synth-heavy instrumentals (as well as its breakdown that has no right being as good as it is) help to keep the song from veering into mediocrity.
Tanzneid suffers from a few overall issues that keep it from being an album I would highly recommend, despite the praise I’ve given it so far. There are a handful of tracks that feel out of place on
Tanzneid’s already-short tracklist, the first being
RATATATA. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an enjoyable and entertaining collaboration with BABYMETAL…but it’s one that I’ve heard many times already, as it was released well over a year ago before appearing on BABYMETAL’s last album,
Metal Forth. Aside from that, there’s also
Let The Good Times Roll, which is an awkward, ham-fisted collaboration with The Offspring that doesn’t provide anything of value to the album as a whole, as well as a cover of Sum 41’s
Still Waiting that feels jarringly safe and bland compared to the remainder of
Tanzneid. Awkward song choices aside, the album also suffers from a lack of replayability. The aforementioned
Just The Way You Are, for example, gets less and less funny the more you hear it. The joke lands so well the first time because the track’s extreme shift in sound is unexpected, but when you know it’s coming, the joke starts to get old. Another thing that contributes to the album’s overall lack of staying power is the fact that many of the songs sound very similar to one another, due to their repetitive techno-elements and similar up-tempo BPMs. After a while, the album’s formula becomes too easy to predict: synth-driven verses, big poppy hooks, and breakdowns. This formula is enjoyable in small doses, but the songs tend to blend together across the album’s runtime.
If you want to turn your brain off for a half-hour and listen to some silly, cheesy, poppy metalcore, then
Tanzneid comes highly recommended, at least for one listen. Your enjoyment with the album will likely diminish on repeated listens though, and I don’t see there being any standout individual tracks that stand the test of time – but when you’re having this much mindless fun, does any of that really matter? Electric Callboy is here for a good time, not a long time.
3 out of 5
