Electric Callboy Bring The Exact Weird We Need to Wintrust Arena

Throughout history, there have been certain bands that come along at the absolute perfect time to give the people exactly what they need, whether they know it or not.

Am I saying Electric Callboy is the perfect band for the year 2026? Yes. And my proof was seeing them in concert last weekend at Wintrust Arena in downtown Chicago.

A true family affair, the show was packed early with people of all ages, shapes, sizes, and colors. And I mean that literally, with a large portion of the audience deciding to dress in only the boldest and most neon of colors like it was the early 90's all over again.

It's hard to explain the sound of Electric Callboy, but imagine LMFAO decided to take their Party Rock sound and mix in equal parts German weirdness and metalcore. It's the auditory equivalent of eating Pixie Stix. The mashing together of these genres doesn't seem like it would work, but it works perfectly. And that's how I found myself in the middle of the biggest dance/mosh pit I've been a part of in years screaming the words (in German, mind you) along with a eurodance-metal song about the mysteries of being a space explorer with a capacity crowd on a Sunday night.

What a time to be alive.

This is my second time catching Scene Queen, having caught her back in 2024 when she came through Chicago as part of the inaugural Summer School tour. Here's the thing about Scene Queen that the uninitiated need to understand before anything else: the name is not ironic and the aesthetic is not a bit. Hannah Collins has fully and completely committed to a lane that most artists would be too self-conscious to even glance at, and that commitment is exactly what makes her work. Walking into a show headlined by Electric Callboy with a set built around tracks called 'Pink G-String' and 'Mutual Masturbation' could be seen as quite the risk (especially with so many kids in the audience), but Collins pulled it off with both confidence and a defiant middle finger attitude.

There's a version of Scene Queen that gets written off as a novelty, a punchline, a joke that the artist is in on. That version is wrong. The songs are sharper than the critics give them credit for, the live delivery is tighter than you'd expect, and the audience response (including her live show patented 'twerkle pit) tells you everything you need to know about whether any of it is connecting.

It is. Very much so.

If Scene Queen's set was a neon sign, Polaris was the equivalent of the flashing lights that go off when you pull a fire alarm.

The Sydney five-piece have spent the better part of a decade building a reputation as one of the most reliable acts in modern metalcore, and Sunday night was a reminder of why that reputation is so thoroughly deserved. Opening with 'Dissipate' (a song that hits like a truck even in a living room, let alone an arena), Polaris wasted no time making their presence felt.

There's a melodic intelligence to Polaris that elevates them above the crowded field of bands operating in the same general territory, and live that quality is even more apparent. Jamie Hails is one of those frontmen who manages to be technically excellent and emotionally present at the same time, which is a harder combination to pull off than it sounds. Being able to have such an intimidating presence while still genuinely seeming happy to be there when bantering between songs is something only an Australian could pull off.

'Masochist' hit hard. 'All of This Is Fleeting' punched harder. By the time the opening chugs of 'Hypermania' kicked in, the pit had evolved into something with its own internal logic and weather system. It was madness. It was sweaty. And it was fucking awesome. Polaris are the kind of band that could headline a room considerably larger than the one they're currently playing. And I can say that because it doesn't seem like any room in existence is big enough to contain their sound. File them under "catch them now before the tickets cost twice as much."

Okay. Where to even begin.

Electric Callboy are a band that should not work as well as they do. The premise, on paper, is genuinely absurd: a German act combining deathcore breakdowns with euphoric eurodance synths, propelled by two frontmen with the stage presence of a Vegas residency and the lyrical maturity of a freshman. The songs have titles like "Hypa Hypa" and "Fuckboi."

And yet.

See these dudes? They were some of the most tamely dressed groups I encountered. I'm not exaggerating. This was a 2 or 3 out of 10 compared to what else I saw out there. Walking into Wintrust Arena for Electric Callboy is like walking into a building where the normal rules of genre, taste, and self-seriousness have been temporarily suspended by mutual agreement. Everyone in the room is in on it. Everyone has already decided to have the greatest time of their life, and the band, to their enormous credit, honors that agreement completely.

Opening with 'TANZNEID' set an early tone of controlled insanity. As the word roughly translates to "dance envy", I think both the performance and the crowd's reaction were both completely on point. Covering Sum 41's 'Still Waiting' carries a lot more cred when former Sum 41 drummer Frank Zummo is sitting behind the kit, which he is for Callboy this tour. And the madness only continued to spiral out of control from there. 'Tekkno Train' set everyone up just for 'Hypa Hypa' (the song that for many people is the entry point into the Electric Callboy universe) sent the room into genuine pandemonium. It's the kind of crowd response that you have to see to fully believe, the kind where you look around at 20,000 people losing their collective minds to a German metalcore-rave hybrid and think: there is genuinely nothing else like this happening anywhere in the world right now.

Even better? We were only 4 songs into the set and had a shit ton of music still to come.

But don't think that Electric Callboy is all surface flash and no depth. Sure, lyrics like 'Shaky shaky, sweaty sweaty/you get my spaghetti ready' aren't exactly modern Shakespeare, but there's a lot more to some of the less sophomoric songs the band has in their quiver. The run from 'Hypercharged' through 'Mindreader' demonstrated that under all the spectacle there's a band that can actually write songs, which matters more than the novelty factor might suggest.

Frank Zummo's drum solo served as a brief moment of genuine technical virtuosity in the middle of what was otherwise an elaborate shared hallucination. After all, it's not often that you see someone face off in a drumming competition with a giant robot with Dr. Octopus arms and come out on top. Yes, the robot was just a video clip, but with the amount of...'substances' that could be smelled in the air in certain parts of the arena, there might have been a non-zero number of people who thought it was real and lived with us on Earth.

And then "Fuckboi" arrived (that might be my favorite sentence I've ever written). Swerving right when the whole evening had been going left (metaphorically, not politically), the band used the drum solo to sneak a guitar, piano, and a few stools into the GA part of the crowd to deliver a heartfelt contrast to what we'd experienced so far.

Like I said at the top, sometimes there are periods in history that are just perfect for a certain band. With all the uncertainty and war and economic stress out there every single day, maybe we need something weird to get us through. Something that you can dance your ass off to if that's what you need, or heavy-metal scream along to if that's what'll get you through to tomorrow. We need this kind of weird in our lives right now.

Electric Callboy - Wintrust Arena 5.3.26 Setlist

TANZNEID
Still Waiting
Tekkno Train
Hypa Hypa
MC Thunder
Neon
Pump It
Hurrikan/Overkill/All the Small Things/Bodies medley
Revery
Hypercharged
Mindreader
Monsieur Moustache/Muffin Purger-Gurk/We Are the Mess/Crystals medley
Fuckboi
Everytime We Touch
MC Thunder II
Elevator Operator
RATATATA
Spaceman
We Got the Moves