Sydney’s Afterpay Arena is already humming long before Electric Callboy appear. Tonight is the Sydney stop on the German band’s biggest Australian headline tour yet, and the crowd pouring into the arena looks ready for something far less restrained than your average Thursday night.
First up are coldrain, the Nagoya band who have been steadily building their international reputation since forming in 2007. Their combination of post-hardcore and metalcore, balancing melody against Masato Hayakawa’s harsher vocals, makes them a natural fit for this bill. There is something impressive, too, about a band that has maintained the same five-piece lineup for nearly two decades, and tonight they get the sizeable arena crowd moving early.
Then Ice Nine Kills turn the arena into their own particularly gruesome theatre. The Boston band’s obsession with horror has long been central to their identity, but seeing it translated to the stage makes clear just how much production sits behind the spectacle. High-quality video sequences run throughout, frequently tipping into gleefully gory territory, while live actors turn songs into miniature horror films unfolding in front of us. At various points there is a policeman, a doctor and, because apparently the stage isn’t strange enough already, a man on stilts. It is a superb production and an ambitious way to fill an arena stage before the headliners have even appeared.
And those headliners have some history with Australian crowds. Electric Callboy’s 2023 debut headline run here sold out completely, while their Good Things appearances have charted their rapid rise particularly well. In 2022, the crowd around Stage 4 became almost comically enormous; by 2024 they had graduated to the main stage and one of the festival’s prime slots. Two years later, they are headlining arenas.
It is not difficult to understand the trajectory. Since forming in 2010, Electric Callboy have turned the collision of metalcore, electronic music, pop and knowingly ridiculous excess into something distinctly their own. The arrival of ‘Hypa Hypa’ in 2020 marked a major shift, while 2022’s gold-certified ‘Tekkno’ and tracks including ‘We Got the Moves’ and the BABYMETAL collaboration ‘RATATATA’ pushed them towards an increasingly global audience.
Tonight Electric Callboy are kinetic from the moment they hit the stage, barely stopping as they tear around the vast Afterpay Arena stage. Flames shoot upwards, confetti explodes over the crowd and the whole thing operates at a pace that rarely allows the room to settle. Everywhere you look there are fans dressed in the band’s trademark tracksuits, turning the audience into an extension of the spectacle onstage. Turns out this is a great way to spend a Thursday night.
Images Deb Pelser
The tour moves to Brisbane next, tickets HERE.
