Album Review

Enter Shikari – Common Dreads

25th May 2009

A spacey ambient opening for the title track leads into a chilling and creepy nourish narrative that prosaically sends out a battle cry. Cultural boundaries are stomped across and we’re implored in several tones and languages; “We Must Unite”.

With this captivatingly varied start, Hertfordshire’s Enter Shikari tear into the massive bass and drum reverb, metallic spliced tirade ‘Solidarity’. Lead honcho, Rou Reynolds uses his mild screech that is contrasted by hearty gospel backing, drawing everyone who listens in to become one united whole.

Then Enter Shikari continues on a 15 track journey, seting out their manifesto for righting the wrongs and promoting liberty. In which the digitally pushed, incendiary screamo/post rock bullet of ‘Step Up’, indicates that it’s time for the faint of heart to start shuffling their iPod in search of Snow Patrol.
Lyrical pungency leaps out at you like an infected porcine, through the gliding guitar led power ballad, ‘Wall’;

“I’m gonna paste you up cover you in wallpaper, screw shelves into you and call you a wall. That’s all you are to me trying to keep people inside, inside your sorded little house. This is no right abode; you can have skirting board shoes and plug sockets on your knees. I’ll hang a painting on your lip and put tinsel around it at Christmas!”

A vibe that is akin to Mike Skinner getting wasted one night and being brave enough to stuff sandpaper down his throat and start singing over a The Rezillos track makes a brief appearance in‘Zzzonked’. Then searing metalcore backing keeps matters tasty and biting. Mood flitting and spacey digitalism pepper this feisty mind freeing journey of political, social and personal emancipation.

‘No Sleep Tonight’, bears out best the rumbling yet bolstering bass lines of Chris Batten, adding grind to this pleading track that sees the vocals adopt a slightly more desperate lag. This is contrasted by the musing and relaxed (well for Enter Shikari anyway!) ‘Gap In The Fence’, where Rory Clewlow’s backing vocals adds a bit of authority to proceedings.

‘Antwerpen’, demonstrates an ability to keep the intensity rolling and builds in an unnerving eeriness, as the meaty topic of re-colonization is put through their grinder. In ‘The Jester’, these Hertfordshire mavericks produce the kind of kitsch, gluttony parodying stomp that The Horrors once threatened to achieve, of course these guys do it with a lot more grit to their rhythm.

This album is going to confirm and further enhance Enter Shikari’s reputation as a bold political nettle grasping act with an ability to delight, entertain and inform.

It is rare on your first listen to an album to be able to start thinking and salivating over what the next album will be like? However, if they keep expanding and experimenting then there are no boundaries for them.