Watching an Enter Shikari show is like being stuck in the body of a hormonally challenged 15-year-old. It’s sweaty, loud, confusing and bloody impossible to get your hands on some alcohol. Oh yeah, and there’s an abundance of knob jokes.
Most of those come from Enter Shikari themselves, who regale the admittedly eager audience with tales of used knickers and ‘danger wanking’. Thanks lads. But hey, the kids love this shit. And just as Elvis Presley was a shock to 1950s parents, so it seems that anyone born before 1989 just won’t get Enter Shikari. But unlike Elvis, these four lads from St Albans don’t have the tunes to match the frenzy.
The band enter to the (old) rave stylings of the Prodigy’s ‘No Good’, simultaneously embracing and sticking two fingers up at all the hype surrounding new rave/post hardcore/whatever genre they belong to this week. CSS did a similar thing in the same venue a few weeks before this when they came onstage to ‘No Limits’, but they followed it up with a collection of their own songs that proved as entertaining as any nostalgia trip.
But within seconds Enter Shikari descend into noise, giving us a set that offers little in the way of light and shade. The crowd become a moshing, punching mess of hormones and neon Topshop gear. Which would be forgivable if the music even occasionally rose above substandard and fairly tuneless stuff. Each song bleeds noisily into the other, with album standouts like ‘Return To Energiser’ and ‘Anything Can Happen In The Next Half An Hour’ becoming lost in the mire.
Frontman Rou Reynolds’ bellow leads wave after wave after bloody wave of din, with his voice just one of the instruments that gets turned up to 11. As he screams into the mic, you’re reminded of that time when Fred Durst was a star – and offered the same kind of dumb thrills to teenagers. Fortunately Durst’s reign lasted about 15 minutes. With any luck Shikari won’t even get that.
Pic: Naomi McArdle