The rise of Electric Callboy, as told through their most important gigs

From ripping it up at the local youth centre and wrecking Russian basements, to launching their own festival and rocking some of the biggest stages in Europe, life on the road with Electric Callboy has been a non-stop rollercoaster. As they prepare to return to Download Festival this month, frontmen Kevin Ratajczak and Nico Sallach look back on the thunderstruck shows that shaped them.

Kevin: “Our first concert was at the Jugendzentrum Trafo in our hometown of Castrop-Rauxel. It was a youth centre show during the MySpace era! We had created some video blogs that represented not just our music, but our personality, and got a bit of local hype as these crazy guys with the crazy music. We were playing a place where we hung out as kids, and there were even people who’d travelled from out of town to be there. Yes, nowadays we have fans who will fly in from America or Japan to catch our shows. But back then it was like, ‘You drove 30 minutes to see us?! Wow!’”

Kevin: “We were asked to play at a student festival called Kozienalia in Lublin, Poland. It was almost at the border with Ukraine, and we needed to be 1,000km west in Osnabrück, Germany the very next day. We were like, ‘Sure, we can do that!’ We had to drive across pretty much all of Poland – often on these bumpy roads – right through the night. We could have easily rolled our van, but it was worth it because it was the first time in our lives where we felt needed and were earning a reputation. I remember coming home to our girlfriends and going, ‘Oh, we’ve been on the road so long we keep forgetting to speak German… Sorry about the Polish accent!’”

Kevin: “When we started doing this properly, we began to get calls from promoters in Russia, China and Japan. Playing at a place called Pod3emka in Rostov-on-Don, Russia was crazy. We’d travelled on our own, carrying all our gear. We didn’t know what to expect. We get there and it’s this little basement room full of concrete pillars like the nightclub from Blade. It was like a ruin of a house that had been abandoned with some speakers and raw cables hanging from the ceiling. Fans were letting off fireworks inside! It was all blood, sweat and tears with feet up against the ceiling. It was a real hardcore show – even if we were wearing tights!”

Nico: “Long before I was in this band, when I was in To The Rats And Wolves, one of our first big tours was opening for Electric Callboy in Europe. It was the first experience of sharing a tour bus. Callboy felt like the biggest band on Earth to me. I realised there was nothing else I wanted to do in my life!”
Kevin: “When we think back to that tour, it’s like talking to a romantic partner. ‘Do you remember how we met at our friend’s party 10 years ago? We had no idea that all these years later we’d be married with children!’”
Nico: “Iwrestledabearonce were on that tour, too, when Courtney [LaPlante] and Mike [Stringer] from Spiritbox were in the band. I’ll always remember their little pre-show workouts. And they shared a bus bunk the whole tour. That’s how you knew they were in it for life!”

Nico: “When Electric Callboy first asked me to fill in, they were looking forward to another tour in Russia. But then COVID happened. So the first show I played was an online stream. We did 13 songs at the Europahalle in Castrop-Rauxel. There were no fans there, but people were watching at home, so you had to talk to them, which was very difficult on my first show as the new singer in this cool band – on top of remembering words to the songs!”
Kevin: “We needed to get creative during COVID, so the whole thing was arranged in this convention centre where I got my ‘graduation certificate’ back when I was eight. Our crew, who organised everything, were shouting ‘Woo!’ or ‘Boo!’ from behind the cameras to help us along!”

Kevin: “The point where we felt like we were breaking through was when the German beer brand Warsteiner ran a ‘Rock im Garten’ competition, where we would go to the winner’s home and play for them and some friends. The guy who won lived somewhere out in East Germany near the Polish border. His parents’ house, which was about to be sold, already had everything moved out. Warsteiner brought two trucks to set up this stage in the garden – and to provide beer.”
Nico: “We drank with them and we had a BBQ. We played a show. And then we continued drinking…”
Kevin: “You’ve got to remember this was in the middle of COVID, so it was like having been on a diet where you were only allowed to drink water, then getting your first heavenly bite of a burger! For us, we’d had the uncertainty of a new singer, the stoppage over COVID. We’d written songs which did well online. But that could’ve been a bubble. This little show proved people liked it!”

Kevin: “We’d already sold out one ‘near-hometown’ show, and were talking about adding another. So we thought, ‘Why not do a festival at Rudolf Weber-ARENA in Oberhausen instead?’”
Nico: “We didn’t know how it would look. We didn’t know how many tickets we would sell. Putting on your own festival is different from a headline show. On paper, we were doing the same thing we had 100 times before, but people expected something special.”
Kevin: “There are so many family and friends there that you feel like the host at your own birthday party. And everyone knows the host never has the best time because they’re worrying that everything is going okay. At least booking the other bands was easy. Since then, it’s gotten harder and harder. You can’t have the same bands again. And you have to find a budget – you can’t be like, ‘Hey guys, you good with a crate of beer?’”

Kevin: “I was so nervous going into this massive, 20,000-person show at this arena close to our home. I used to play soccer, and playing big shows can be like running out for big games. You can prepare all you like, but some days everything works and some days it just doesn’t. Fortunately, everything was perfect. Then our label surprised us with Gold discs onstage to celebrate the success of [2022 album] Tekkno. We genuinely didn’t know that was going to happen!”
Nico: “That was the first time I ever cried onstage. I just couldn’t hold it back. It was another moment where we had all our friends and family around us, and the night where we really saw what we’d achieved up to that point. It was hard to go back on afterwards!”
Kevin: “Yeah, it’s never been the same since. Playing a show without getting a Gold disc? Who does that?!”

Nico: “It’s an open secret that, for every German band, Rock am Ring is right at the top of your bucket list. And it’s not purely rock and metal – there’s a mix of genres. It’s very international.”
Kevin: “Growing up, it’s where a lot of kids go when they’re young. It’s where all the big bands you listened to at school played. And when you start a band, you say, ‘One day, I’m going to play Rock am Ring, too.’ We were first booked before COVID, but then it was postponed, then the new promoters didn’t book us for the next one. So there was such a great feeling when we finally played it in 2024.”
Nico: “And in 2026, we’ll be back for the third year in a row. We did a secret set last year, and our first DJ show as Electric Bassboy. This year we’re at both Rock am Ring and Rock im Park officially.”

Kevin: “Ally Pally is one of those venues which people are proud of – the same as L’Olympia in Paris. It’s not just a big hall, it has history. And it’s not some corporate place that gets rebranded every year. Going up the road to that old building feels special, too, and seeing the LED board that says, ‘Electric Callboy, welcome to Ally Pally.’ Then you look out at where your production will be placed. On the TANZNEID World Tour, we had three big lighting rigs, which moved through the set. But at Ally Pally you can’t put much weight on the ceiling, so we just had one. We were worried about that in the same way that someone who wears make-up every day no longer feels comfortable without it.”
Nico: “But we shouldn’t have been. The crowd proved us wrong. I’m a big darts fan, so I’ve always wanted to visit the venue for that, but playing there was never on my bingo card. For many years, we struggled to sell lots of tickets in the UK – we had passionate fans, but not as many as in other places – and we didn’t believe that we could sell that room out. So the fact we did was incredibly special. It’s hard to imagine how we get bigger. I guess maybe one day we’ll do Wembley Stadium!”

This interview originally appeared in the spring 2026 issue. Electric Callboy appear at Download Festival this month.

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