Enter Shikari largely passed us by: we’d seen the massive queues of devoted fans outside the Academy but their in-yer-face ADHD take on dance rock was too much for us; it’s for kids to go mental to in the moshpit.
This changed with their last album A Flash Flood Of Colour, where they tackled global issues with admirable venom and pas-sion: economic meltdown, con-flicts, riots and global warming were all given a good kicking.
This new album tackles similar subjects but the music is mellower than in the past (comparatively speaking), perhaps them realising that their message (and they have one) will reach more people if the music is not quite so confrontational.
It opens with an impassioned plea “to the struggling and striv-ing stakeholders of this planet / This floating rock we call earth” to heed the Enter Shikari mes-sage, which then tackles racism, privatisation of the NHS, faith in science, class warfare, global warming and economics.
Musically, there’s still plenty of hardcore but also more melody and even strings. We respect Enter Shikari but we guess their dilemma is whether the people who will listen to their message can listen to their music. You should give it a try: a worthy band.