All aboard the Tekkno Train! Electric Callboy’s barnstorming Alexandra Palace headliner is a whirlwind of hilarity and neon-splattered fun.
It's a good day for people who have leg warmers and bad wigs lying around the house. Some of them have turned up to Alexandra Palace tonight in full on Electric Callboy cosplay, a ridiculous sight befitting a proudly ridiculous band.
“You look like us!” co-vocalist Nico Sallach jokes. “It’s like a mirror!”
It's about to get very big, and very stupid.
At 7pm, however, the atmosphere feels oddly frigid. On paper, openers WARGASM seem like the ideal livewire party-starting band for a night like this, but between the slightly thin sound and periodically wobbly vocals from both Sam Matlock and Milkie Way, the audience aren’t having it. “I'm like a T-rex,” fumes Sam, “my vision is based on movement and I can't see shit!” His belligerence helps little, and in the end, an anaemic clap-along to the outro of closer Do It So Good brings the set to a fairly awkward end.
On top of that, Bury Tomorrow quickly eclipse them. From the stabbing riffs of opener Choke to an incendiary showing of Boltcutter, and a gorgeous lights-in-air moment with What If I Burn, the Southampton crew are on golden form. Vocalist Dani Winter-Bates is as note perfect as you can be shredding your larynx as he does, but beneath the brutality, he has a lot of heart. “If we don’t use this platform to talk about inclusion I’m not doing my job, basically,” he says, encouraging the crowd to “be kinder and more inclusive to people” – and to put their arms around the strangers next to them. They’re still dedicated to the mosh though. “Fucking batter each other!”
The right way to describe Callboy, meanwhile, is mahoosive. They make a thunderous noise with new single TANZNEID against a backdrop of fireworks, flames and a giant beaming X-shaped light fixture hanging above them. Up there, they look like the bona fide arena superstars they always dreamed of being. Everyone from front to back is jumping like the floor is lava. They sing the riff of HYPA HYPA like it’s a football chant, escaping from reality into a gloriously OTT world of colourful lights and hooks that’ll never escape their heads.
It's madness, and it was always going to be. The onstage antics are just as silly, from Nico and fellow vocalist Kevin Ratajczak tearing off their trousers Magic Mike-style, to Nico throwing darts at a board in honour of Ally Pally’s history with the sport. Aside from the customary slow numbers in the form of an acoustic Fuckboi and a piano version of Everytime We Touch, it’s a non-stop party, which only intensifies in the final few songs. Elevator Operator absolutely slams, as does RATATATA, with Spaceman bringing a zany burst of melody and a triumphant We Got The Moves to finish.
Even after an hour and three quarters of this, some of the crowd are still jumping around to their exit music as the lights come up and everyone files out. It’s been a loud, outrageous, stupidly fun night – everything Callboy are, in essence. After this, getting the call to top of festival bills must be inevitable.
Read this next:
