Verdict first: TANZNEID is a riot, and you have already been on most of it.
The German sextet that used to go by Eskimo Callboy, Electric Callboy, rolled its seventh studio album through the Century Media gates on 7 August 2026, ten songs in thirty one minutes plus four remixes that drag the package out to about forty four, with Frank Zummo, formerly of Sum 41, on his first studio record with the band after David-Karl Friedrich left in April 2025 following thirteen years behind the kit. Eight of those ten songs were out as singles before the album was. Do the maths.
Now picture a fairground after dark, because that is what this band builds. Every ride has a siren. Every bulb on the big wheel is chasing the one in front of it. The synths are those bulbs, the breakdowns are the waltzer when the man in the vest leans on your car and spins it hard enough to rattle the bolts out of the floor, and Kevin Ratajczak and Nico Sallach are the two voices on the tannoy, one screaming the prices and one singing the jingle. The opener, "TANZNEID", kicks the turnstile flat and waves you through.
The title is the joke that holds the whole park up. Tanz is dance, Neid is envy, and the band glued the two into a word German never had. Dance envy. That is the brief. It is not a deep one.
The main purpose of this album is to take you out of your everyday life.
Kevin Ratajczak, Knotfest, 6 August 2026
He means it, and the record keeps the promise.
"RATATATA" is the ride with the longest queue. Babymetal come aboard, the hooks fire like a shooting gallery that pays out on every shot, and nothing else in the park draws a louder scream. It is also the song you had on repeat more than a year before the album existed. Remember that. It comes back later.
"Heartclub" is where the new drummer earns his wristband. Zummo hits like a man on the strongman game who rings the bell every swing, smashes the brass clean off the top of the pole and keeps swinging at the bare post, and the bass rolls underneath him like the floor of the waltzer tilting under your feet. It hits hard and it hits on time. If you came for the band and not the jokes, start here.
"Elevator Operator" is the dodgems. Silly, loud, catchy enough to be annoying by the third play and still going round your head by the tenth. No apology anywhere near it. Good.
Then "The Way You Are", and this is the ride that sorts the crowd. It is a sugary boy-band ballad for most of its two and a half minutes, a carousel playing a slow dance with painted horses going gently up and down, until somebody throws the lever and the horses start biting. Take it as a cheap trick glued to a song that did not need it, or take it as the best gag on the record. I take the gag. A band this committed to the bit is allowed one ride that is pure prank, and the switch from sweetness to howling is the funniest thing here.
The rest is fairground furniture, some of it bolted on straighter than others. "Hypercharged" is a tie-in with the mobile game Brawl Stars. "Let The Good Times Roll (feat. The Offspring)" puts The Offspring in the next car along, and it plays either as a lap of honour or as a guest who wandered onto the wrong ride. Mostly the first. "Still Waiting" is a Sum 41 cover with an ex-Sum 41 drummer on it, which is a nice touch and not much more. "Revery" closes the ten on the ghost train, darker and orchestral, spooky in the cartoon way, and a better ending than you expect.
Walk through the gate with eight of the ten rides already ridden on the way in, and the four spare tokens in your hand turn out to be the same rides run backwards with the lights off: three remixes of songs you just heard and one of "We Got the Moves", which is not on this album at all. That is not a tracklist. That is a car park full of vans that got here before the fair opened.
Does it matter that TANZNEID sounds so much like Tekkno? Not to me. Nobody asks the waltzer to turn into a rollercoaster. The same formula run again at full tilt is exactly what this band should be doing, and the vocals are the strongest thing about it, Ratajczak shredding his throat on the harsh parts and Sallach carrying every chorus to the back of the field. Sallach admitted the pressure himself, telling Knotfest on 6 August 2026 that "back then, nobody was expecting anything from us". This time everybody was, and they delivered the rides.
What they did not deliver is a surprise. Thirty one minutes of new-to-the-shelf music, of which the new-to-your-ears part is a sliver, is a thin night out at full price. I have spent enough nights by merch tables to know nobody walks away from one humming a bonus remix.
None of the ten songs is the problem. The fault is the ticket booth.
So here is where it lands. If you have never stepped inside this park, TANZNEID is a cracking ticket, and "RATATATA", "Heartclub" and "The Way You Are" will have you screaming on the waltzer by the second song. If you followed every single as it dropped, you have ridden this fair already, and the only new thing waiting inside is the queue.