Enter Shikari
Your Demise, letlive
Electric Ballroom, London
19 October 2011
It’s Thursday night in North London – there isn’t anything to do bar from eat the leftovers at a discount rate from Camden market or spend a week’s wages in one of it’s many notorious stale smelling pubs. Fortunately tonight, the Electric Ballrooms have Enter Shikari inside so it’s best to kill two birds with one stone, push the boat out and see how a band is winning eight years on in their career.
Before you were able to get all excited about the Shikari men, support from letlive and Your Demise rocked out the room. letlive’s singer plunged into the post-hardcore crowd with not only his voice but with his body, literally. The atmosphere of Let Live engaged into the younger souls pulling them closer into the crowd so their performance became an emphatic mini mosh pit.
If this wasn’t enough, it only gets better (oh yes it does!) Your Demise were insane! Their outspoken, energetic, consummating musical manner is what makes their tales about adolescence become a candid reminder that this is reality and everyday living that are being sung, (check ‘The Kids We Use To Be’) not a soppy, materialised teenager that can’t seen for toffee .. or a cheeky buck (shame on you X Factor). Your Demise have that London edge, that stage presence that can’t be rejected, it’s widespread infectiousness and with that refreshing style, watch out for these men, great things in the future is what I’m deliberating, in a Yoda sense.
Okay now for the main feature of this pumped up, teenage red stripe can drinking teenage sweating, huddled up atmosphere. An upside down V illuminates over the crowd, with excitement building as ‘Common Dreads’ plays in a moment of ‘I’ve waited months for this to happen and now it’s happening I must tweet, I must Facebook to be the envy of one and all’ … and a lot of them did .. I saw you.
Needless to say, Enter Shikari do not need any introduction, before they were on stage the crowd of Lions (aka. Enter Shikari fans) made themselves heard by shouting ‘and still we be here, standing like statues’ (if you are oblivious to where these words come from, you have obviously missed out on their previous album Common Dreads.) With a guitar torch shining to the crowd and Enter Shikari members becoming clearer by the second, it was time get straight on it with the show.
‘Destabilise’ smacked into the sound system putting their fans in a unity of euphoria. Every word was followed, watching singer Rou belt out the subvert lyrics bringing attention on stage, presence is everything and this lad’s charisma is kind of a big deal. After a couple of songs in, he relentlessly went to his crowd of lions so they could grab their idol (so near, even crowd surfing got security out of the way) and he survived to sing the night out (his shirt however, did not). If that wasn’t enough, the ecstasy of sweat, beats and beers got Rou on the other end of the room climbing part of the DJ booth apex. I don’t know what the lead singer does before going on stage but he needs to keep doing it, his way of magnetising the crowd, going wild like lunatic and still able to sing, scream and have an adrenaline for an hour constant, that’s more than just commitment, it puts a lot of band’s that are mainstream today to shame! Even Rory’s had spurts of spontaneity standing on amps, skanking about or Chris and his constant circle spinning whilst still playing the bass, mad times! Hectic’ and ‘OK Time For Plan B’ saw both guitarist Rory and bassist Chris going in on all guns, whilst drummer Rob smashing the hell out of the drum kit (all for a good cause).
What the Enter Shikari put in, it showed as a top rate performance and everything was considered, even the lighting that had over five different moods to draw attention to their song list as sections (even the fans were cooled down by a mass of air condition thanks to a guy called Steve .. thanks Steve!) The amount of hard work in a humid indoor live music heat wasn’t an issue; it bounced off from the stage to the mosh pit as one big party (with dub step in between atmospheres and a human pyramid!). New songs ‘Quelle Surprise’ and ‘Sssnakepit’ lyrically have emphasis of the current state of the world and it’s corruption due to its sociocultural direction. An important emphasis was put onto Zeitgeist (quite rightly so) to combine the real message with written lyrics and seen live, the quality is outstanding vocally and to listen on CD makes a gig ticket worth the dollar.
The liver performance had such versatility and flexibility, as each song played, they merged from Post-Hardcore to Dubstep to Electronic to Rock and in between all that a nice bit of humoured banter and jumping on speakers, smashing up parts of the instruments for kicks. Followed by more climbing, skanking, slipping over to skank back up again, colliding against bouncers or safety restrictions. Kudos has to be given out for ‘Sorry, You’re Not A Winner’- this legendary song have been part of the band’s archive for sometime, it cranked up the levels of their Lions knowing that all good things have to come to an end. With the vocals mix, Enter Shikari scattering all over the stage with their audience fixated in a mixture of being crunked moshers and hands in a vigour state, a total of over 400 had crowd surfed, doesn’t Enter Shikari live speak for themselves?
The saying goes you should judge a band not by the cover but their live performance – Enter Shikari pushed the limit and made it bigger. Once it was all over all over all I kept hearing were the words, “I don’t f****** believe this!” – that summed up the night as a whole, they came, they saw, they conquered, happily.
Review by Skye Portman
