I first heard of Enter Shikari about a year ago. I was involved in a debate on tumblr about where crabcore had come from. I felt like I was onto something with my "it's like a bad version of what Horse The Band and Genghis Tron are doing" explanation, but then this English kid jumped into the debate with a link to an Enter Shikari video and shut the entire argument down. The video was for "Sorry, You're Not A Winner," from their first LP, Take To The Skies:
At the time, I was just appalled. The video seemed to represent everything I hated about current trends in the screamo and metalcore genres. Overly flamboyant silliness, drum programming, keyboards, detraction from heaviness except for token screams and chugga-chug breakdowns, and an overall embracing of techno songwriting tropes. I walked around cursing their name for at least six months. And yet I couldn't really stop thinking about them either. Things that are car-accident bad, things that, in spite of their awfulness, you can't turn away from, cause weird reactions in my brain. First I hate them. Then, I become fascinated by them. Then I sort of guiltily start to enjoy them. Sorta. Maybe.
That's where Enter Shikari are for me right now. I stumbled upon their video for "Zzzonked," from their second album, 2009's Common Dreads, and found their sound to have metamorphosed into something both better and worse than where it had been on their first album. Witness:
That first minute or so knocks me out. Every friend of mine that I've played it for has hated it, but I sometimes have days where I can't stand to stop playing it--I'll listen to the first half of this song over and over for an hour or something. But only the first half, because while even the keyboards and goofy lyrics aren't enough to repel me from that opening mosh riff, the second half of the song is basically bad techno. There are barely any lyrics, and despite the fact that the band's lineup is the standard rock four-piece--guitar, bass, drums, singer--pretty much the only thing you hear for the last 90 seconds of this song is keyboards, samples, and beats. The video is a mindfuck too, to watch a fired-up London crowd go from headwalking during mosh riffs to slamming into each other Lollapalooza-style during what amounts to an electroclash breakdown. And I hate that part of the song; it's clear that things like this are where Attack Attack! and other such pseudo-screamo horrors of the modern era such as Blood On The Dance Floor and Brokencyde came from. Still though, I'm morbidly fascinated by it, and by the band as a whole.
As the live footage in the video makes clear, Enter Shikari's shows are off the chain, at least when they play in Europe. Tickets for their Richmond gig are $13, which is way too much to pay for a show that I will probably find more amusing and disturbing than sincerely enjoyable--even if I have always enjoyed the work of openers Haste The Day. And I'm nowhere near shameless enough to attempt to score free tickets from a publicist in order to write what will almost certainly be a negative review. And yet, there's a certain part of me that really wants to check that show out. I guess it's the same part of me that can't stop watching gore movies even when they make me sick to my stomach. That part of me probably shouldn't get indulged too often, but on the other hand, I've been listening to the new Katy Perry album nonstop for the past week, so what the hell, right?
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Enter Shikari performs at The Canal Club on Monday, October 11, with Haste The Day, Sleeping With Sirens, MS White, and Lights Go Blue. Tickets are $13 in advance, $15 at the door. Show starts at 6 PM. Email me if you've got an extra ticket you're looking to get rid of.