ESKIMO CALLBOY... Where does one start? Hailing from Castrop-Rauxel, Germany, ESKIMO CALLBOY have been around since May 2010 and since then have shared the stage with bands like IWRESTLEDABEARONCE, WE BUTTER THE BREAD WITH BUTTER and BAKKUSHAN. "Crystals" is their third album and was released in March 2015. Their music seems to confuse the majority of people, they've been described as Metalcore, Post-Hardcore, Trancecore, Porno-Metal and they call themselves Electrocore. Upon listening to this album, it's extremely easy to see where all the confusion comes from.

Their sound is like a very tasteless mixture of ASKING ALEXANDRIA, and ENTER SHIKARI. The teenage girl inside me is screaming with delight at this mash-up, but the twenty-two year old adult is cringing. "Crystals" seems to be the bands way of growing up (for lack of a better term). They focus more on their instruments and actual playing (albeit not by much) than previously. Their previous releases seemed to focus on wild parties and getting wasted. "Crystals" tells the story of addiction and almost feels like the throbbing hangover and confusion you get after a few too many drinks. After several listens to this album, much different from the hangover, it doesn't get better. Almost every song has the same heavily auto-tuned clean vocals on top of a danceable beat with messy screams and heavy guitar riffs thrown in here and there. ESKIMO CALLBOY have almost been counter-productive in this album, they strayed away from what they were used to writing, but unfortunately, couldn't pull it out of the bag. They rely too much on electronica and synth which masks their musical ability.

Overall, I give this album 3/10. If it wasn't for the solid production and decent sounding guitar work from Daniel and Pascal I would have given it a lower rating. This band has been going for over 5 years, releases albums and has an immense Twitter and Facebook following, so needless to say, tastes can greatly differ, personally cannot see the appeal.