While so many bands fall victim to the old ‘sophomore slump’, ENTER SHIKARI have broken the chains, taking to the metaphorical skies at a ridiculous rate since their first record. Vocalist Rou Reynolds is more than willing to tell Lucy Valentine about the responsibility that comes with rising to the top.
“Sometimes it can be the most arduous thing in the world,” laughs Rou Reynolds, “slogging it through that song once more!”
The charismatic Enter Shikari front man refers of course to the band’s well-loved Sorry, You’re Not a Winner, a favourite amongst the side-fringed, hardcore dancing, metalcore-loving crowd. If you’ve been drunk off your arse at a club where tattoos and promiscuity gather, chances are you’ve clapped along like an idiot to the song’s opening riffs. Since the band’s debut full-length Take to the Skies in 2007, the UK’s Enter Shikari have managed an improvement in musical prowess and depth to rival Pantera’s rise above the horror of Metal Magic. But it’s a sad reality that a lot of Enter Shikari’s early fans haven’t been too pleased with the progression. Read any of the YouTube comments on the band’s newer tracks (well actually, maybe you shouldn’t) and you’ll see a bunch of hardcore kids with their panties in a knot about the fact the band’s musical style has changed since their first album.
“With the second album Common Dreads it was a big change, or so people like to think,” Rou continues with a little bitterness. “There was a lot more hysteria over wanting us to just carry on making music like Take to the Skies, so I guess it was more of a shock. With the new album, it’s calmed down quite a lot, though. You’re always going to get those people who’ll say, ‘I wish they just made that type of music,’ but you know we just get so bored with that; we’re quite sick of it!”
Understandable, considering the vast musical divide between the rough teenage screams of Take to the Skies and the irresistible mesh of chaos and cohesion that is the band’s latest record A Flash Flood of Colour. It’s hard to talk about the hardcore/electronica genre without conjuring nightmarish aural images of bands like Attack Attack! and Breathe Carolina, but it’s an absolute crime to throw Enter Shikari amongst those ranks. With a live show that packs a tidal wave of raw power and a fresh arsenal of divinely crafted hardcore tracks, it’s hard to see them as the same band they were just five years ago.
“With Take to the Skies, most of those songs were written when we were like 16 or 17,” Rou elaborates. “We’ve always been into quite a diverse range of music, but I guess it’s just widened even more. We’re inspired by everything from the beginnings of hardcore punk, through to Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead, even a bit of classical. We’ve had more confidence to delve into those areas that we hadn’t before. We’re a bit more fearless.”
That new-found confidence has certainly paid off, seeing A Flash Flood of Colour briefly sit at the top of the UK charts and inspiring waves of positive reviews. Today, Rou’s enjoying some very brief downtime between a ridiculously busy European touring schedule for the album, and ahead of the band’s second visit to Australian shores this year.
“We just had such a good time at Soundwave!” Rou gushes. “All the crowds kind of exceeded our expectations—such a good vibe. We just wanted to come back, harness that energy and put on our own show.”
Energy is certainly a key word when it comes to Enter Shikari, and there’s such a diversity between tracks, and even within each track, it’s damn impressive they can put on such a cohesive live show.
“The thing is with Flash Flood, it was all so intertwined anyway,” Rou explains, with an eloquence that’s kind of unnerving coming through such a rough Hertfordshire accent. “You know, the bass is starting to trigger with the electronics and the effects, Rory’s guitar at some point is even linked up to Ableton on stage, we’ve got intricate interwebs of things going on now. So the lines are sort of blurred between instrumentation.”
With the chaos of their tour schedule, the possibility of new material seems hopeless, but a girl can dream.
“We’ll be back into the studio to start the cycle again soon!” Rou assures me. “We’ve still got a lot of stuff left over from A Flash Flood of Colour; not the kind of stuff that didn’t make it, just stuff that didn’t develop in time. Some of the ideas were the most excited we’ve ever been about music, so it’s quite frustrating for us that we never had the time to develop them. So yeah, we’ve got a lot of shit left over in the tank. We want to get back in and record as soon as possible.”
Musicality and killer live shows aside, there’s a pretty strong and direct message of anti-political defiance being shouted at you all throughout A Flash Flood of Colour, and Rou’s voice lights up with enthusiasm when I ask him about the importance of it.
“When Enter Shikari took off I guess we found ourselves on this pedestal whether we liked it or not, and it was then that we really felt a big surge of responsibility. We started paying more attention to the music scene, both underground and mainstream, so it was then that we sort of realised that a lot of lyrical content is either utter mindless, soulless rubbish, or it’s stuff like mainstream rap—just endorsing greed and glorifying violence. It’s just pushing negativity and division out there. So we decided we really wanted to be on the other side of the scale, sort of balancing it out; trying to inject some positivity and unity into people’s listening.”
Rou seems to spark up with passion when discussing both the music and the underlying message, so the question becomes: Is one more important than the other? Unsurprisingly his answer is no.
“I think the amount of people that now come up to us and will thank us for the lyrics, and the meaning and passion behind it, it’s really the same amount of people that will come up and thank us for the music,” he explains. “It really has become the other reason why we’re doing this, you know, it’s not just art for art’s sake; it’s not just us making music we enjoy. It’s very much also become something we think is very important in terms of the lyrics and the message.”
So definitely no pained tales of heartbreak buried in that back catalogue?
“Not really!” Rou answers with a laugh. “Even back in the days of Take to the Skies and our EPs before that, they were never really done on personal experiences, I always felt a bit … maybe ‘egotistical’ is a bit harsh of a word, but I always felt a bit weird writing about my life. I always preferred to take imaginary scenarios, or just shout a load of rubbish. And then eventually I preferred to actually speak about things that hopefully matter to everyone.”
