Enter Shikari 'Common Dreads' album

The buzz on U.K. favorites ENTER SHIKARI continues to flourish at home and across the Atlantic as the St. Albans, England-based quartet—who audaciously melds hardcore punk with pulse-pumping drum’n’bass and dark, gut-churning dubstep--debuts at #16 on the U.K. charts with COMMON DREADS. Recently released worldwide on June 16 and digitally in the United States via the band’s own imprint Ambush Reality in partnership with DGC/Interscope Records, COMMON DREADS--which was produced by Andy Gray (U2, Tori Amos, Korn, Gary Numan)--is the follow-up to their gold-certified debut Take to the Skies, which landed at #4 on the U.K. charts.

In other exciting news, ENTER SHIKARI was recently nominated for two KERRANG! Awards for Best Live Band and Best British Band. The 2009 Awards—to be held in London August 3 and hosted by Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor and Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian—is presented by KERRANG!, the influential music weekly that celebrates hard/hardcore rock acts in the U.K. and beyond.

In support of COMMON DREADS, ENTER SHIKARI will kick off their first U.S. headlining tour July 2 at New York's Gramercy Theater and will later join metalcore band August Burns Red as a supporting act on a month-long tour across the nation, marking the longest-running U.S. trek for ENTER SHIKARI to date. Following their U.S. tour, ENTER SHIKARI will head east to Japan where they will play Summersonic Festival before making their way home where they’ll perform at two of the U.K.'s most celebrated festivals: Reading and Leeds. In between these dates, the band will also make a number of high-profile appearances at several major European festivals including a headlining performance at Germany's Mini Rock Festival, Rocko Del Schlako Festival in Germany, Azfeszt Festival in Hungary, Pukkelpop in Belgium and several others. Expect the group to return to the U.S. later in 2009.

Catch ENTER SHIKARI on tour in the following cities:

Thu 7/2 New York, NY Gramercy Theater
Fri 7/3 Poughkeepsie, NY The Loft
Sun 7/5 Providence, RI Club Hell
Mon 7/6 Albany, NY Valentines
Tue 7/7 S. Hackensack, NJ School of Rock
Wed 7/8 Allentown, PA Crocodile Rock

Enter Shikari headlining U.S. tour with August Burns Red, Bless The Fall, I Wrestled A Bear Once:

Fri 7/10 Towson, MD Recher Theatre
Sat 7/11 Philadelphia, PA Starlight Ballroom
Sun 7/12 Buffalo, NY The Town Ballroom
Mon 7/13 Akron, OH Musica
Tue 7/14 Detroit, MI Magic Stick
Wed 7/15 Chicago, IL House of Blues
Thu 7/16 Madison, WI The Loft
Sat 7/18 Omaha, NE Sokol Auditorium
Tue 7/21 San Francisco, CA Slim’s
Wed 7/22 Los Angeles, CA Key Club
Thu 7/23 San Diego, CA Soma
Fri 7/24 Pomona, CA The Glass House
Sat 7/25 Pomona, CA The Glass House
Sun 7/26 Scottsdale, AZ Venue of Scottsdale
Mon 7/27 Albuquerque, NM Sunshine Theater
Wed 7/29 Dallas, TX The Max

Summersonic Festival Japan
Fri 8/7 Osaka, JAPAN Summersonic (4:00pm)
Sun 8/9 Tokyo, JAPAN Summersonic (4:00pm)

Rocko Del Schlako Festival
Fri 8/14 Saarland, Germany Rocko Del Schlako Fest (5:00pm)

Headlining--Mini Rock Festival
Sat 8/15 Horb Am Neckar, Germany Mini Rock Festival (8:00pm)

Azfeszt Festival
Wed 8/19 Nyírbátor, Hungary Azfeszt Festival (12:00pm)

Frequency Festival
Thur 8/20 St. Pölten, Austria Frequency Festival (12:00pm)

Trutnov Festival
Fri 8/21 Trutnov, Czech Republic Trutnov Festival (7:00pm)

Pukkelpop
Sat 8/22 Hasselt, Belgium Pukkelpop (7:00pm)

Lowlands Festival
Sun 8/23 Biddinghuizen, Netherlands Lowlands Festival (12:00pm)

Leeds Festival
Fri 8/28 Leeds, ENGLAND Leeds Festival (2:00pm)

Reading Festival
Sat 8/29 Reading, ENGLAND Reading Festival (2:00pm)

press quotes
BBC
“Highlights are fabulously catchy first single ‘Juggernauts,’ swelling grower ‘Wall,’ teenage anthem ‘Hectic’ with its computer-game-esque melody and the unexpectedly twinkly and lovely ‘Gap InThe Fence.’ The album is packed with anthems too –‘The Jester’ is Blur's Parklife for the Noughties. And ‘No Sleep Tonight’ is a hardcore reply to Faithless' ‘Insomnia.” --Sophie Bruce, 6-8-09

FHM 4-out-of-5 star review:
“Hailing from the wilds of St. Albans, Enter Shikari brought their electronic hardcore to the masses with their hugely successful debut, Take To The Skies, and on number two they’ve stepped up their game. The songs are more than just Foo Fighters numbers run through a Moog keyboard. They stand alone as sing-along monsters that at times are genuinely angry. Best track: ‘Zzzonked’ is like a calculator at a riot.” --June 2009

THE GUARDIAN:
“…the album merits respect for hammering home earnest polemics about ‘people power’ and doing it with more musical imagination than the similarly inclined Enemy.” -Caroline Sullivan, June 12, 2009

ABSOLUTE PUNK:
“Everything about COMMON DREADS is bigger and more realized. “Antwerpen” is catchy whilst still scraping our knees with pissed-off “La La Las”; “Hectic” moves forward on the legs of Reynolds’ much-improved electronics. It’s a dance party for the end of the world. And f**k me for typing that, but COMMON DREADS reminds me why loud music succeeds so readily. It’s an avenue to let it all go, and COMMON DREADS is an outlet of mammoth proportions.” --Blake Solomon, May 31, 2009

KERRANG! Live review:
“Delivered a punchy, dynamic set weighted in favour of new material. The band’s excellent second album, due in June, nods towards the agro-merchants Gallows, The Prodigy and The King Blues and consequently new songs like ‘Step Up’ sound more muscular and menacing…” --Paul Brannigan, April 2009

MOJO
“A portentous Star Wars-styled spoken intro about the evils of consumerism segues into big metal riffs on ‘Solidarity,’ Mike Skinnerish raps on ‘Juggernauts,’ then drum’n’bass breaks, euphoric rave keyboards, church choirs and anthemic choruses, all sung with a committed vocal ferocity by Roughton Reynolds. The end effect is like an ADD-compiled mixtape about the ills of globalization, and therefore possibly the true sound of the British suburbs, 2009.” --Ben Myers, July 2009

Q
"The Hertfordshire quartet have responded by tackling our age's unifying causes: financial armageddon, civil liberties, er, Tesco's attempts to build a St Albans superstore. When everything gels, as on 'Juggernauts' or donk-heavy 'Zzzonked,' 'Common Dreads' kicks off like twitchy coppers policing a G20 protest." --Dan Silver, July 2009

NME
“’COMMON DREADS’ is even more monstrous…In very basic terms, Enter Shikari have got better at what they do…Funeral For A Friend might offer a more cleanly anthemic take on the screamo idiom, Bullet For My Valentine a more fist-punchingly trad pop-metal formula but, for those who like their sonic nuptials to continue long after their bits have gone numb, ‘COMMON DREADS' offers an ugly sort of bliss." --Alex Denney, June 13, 2009

Enter Shikari biography
Common Dreads is the new album by St. Albans-based quartet Enter Shikari. It was born in a back garden shed in St. Albans after a mental two years (we’ll get to that in a minute) in the lives of these young men. Here, during summer 2008, in a bungalow dubbed The Low built in bassist Chris Batten’s parents’ back garden, the words and music came together

The band then moved to Arreton Manor, a studio amongst the remote and picturesque rolling moors of the Isle Of Wight with producer Andy Gray (who has not only worked with U2, Korn and Tori Amos, but penned that ubiquitous Big Brother theme music). In this the rural seclusion that seems totally odds with the apoplectic and articulate squall of Common Dreads, our four plucky young heroes created a squall of political protest handily disguised as a club bangers and mosh-pit epics. The end result is a soundtrack for an entire generation – one where the party is as important as the politics.

Some are already suggesting Common Dreads will come define the era into which it was born: one of recession, paranoia, state control and the fallout of decades of accelerated capitalism. But – and this is important – also an era of hope and creativity, humanity, hedonism, irreverence and fun. This revolution may not be televised, but it will certainly be amplified. Just check out lead single ‘Juggernauts’, a song that is already eating it’s way through Britain’s radios and sending all the other songs running for cover.

“Politics are unavoidable,” says singer Rou Reynolds. “We just can’t write sappy music. Personally I can’t write limp soulless songs about how lovely a girl is. If the first album was quite cryptic and metaphor-heavy, this one is more direct. Since we gained popularity we realised, whether we like it or not, we have the ability to influence people – and with that is a responsibility to speak our minds.”

And what are Common Dreads exactly? “They’re shared worries,” says Rou. “The things that concern people today on a global level – catastrophic climate change, wars, terror laws, CCTV society, modern imperialism and the affects of capitalism.”

All of this may come as a shock to those who had Enter Shikari pegged as nothing but a lurid new band for the misunderstood Skins / ‘Broken Britain’ generation. Wrong. They were always more than that. But let’s not get too distracted by the politics – ‘Zzzonked’ is pure head-stoving drum ‘n’ bass metal madness with a double side order of donk while ‘The Jester’ is a wry, jazz-infused chooon with a stomping cocksure klaxon of a melody designed to destroy festival crowds. lt’s an album for the late 00s, basically; a big, bold record bursting at the seams with ideas.

Let’s put all this into context for a moment. Enter Shikari (the name comes from a boat that belonged to singer Rou Reynolds’ uncle) formed in 2003 in the quaint and historical home counties town of St Albans, just near enough to London to know something exciting lurked beyond the horizon, but too far away to run headlong into it.

They spent their formative years forging a sound that audaciously melded hardcore punk with hardcore rave/trance. And while media scenesters down the road were harping on about the fictional nu rave scene, Enter Shikari were out there doing something much more exciting. Something that hit a nerve.

Remember those early shows? We do. We remember the sweat and the smiles, the laser beams and the elegiac choruses. We remember the blur of flashing Shikari cygnet rings as somersaulting fists pumped the air; we remember the surges of serotonin up the spine into the lower cortex. We remember looking at the crowds and thinking: holy shit – this is a generational thing! We remember Tony Wilson telling Seymour Stein to check out Enter Shikari – and we remember his reaction: “You’re not a band - you’re a revolution.”

And it was. And it still is. And then things got hectic. In summer 2006 Enter Shikari packed out the MySpace tent at Download festival on reputation alone, and by November of that year had become only the second ever unsigned band to sell out the London Astoria. Two sold nights at the Hammersmith Palais followed shortly afterwards.

This all happened away from the patronage of any of the big record labels. Enter Shikari did it themselves – the old way. The DIY punk way. Which is why, despite plenty of offers, they decided to release their debut album Take To The Skies on their own Ambush Reality imprint. When it cruised in at No. 4 it became one of the most successful self-released rock albums ever. That’s ever.

Accolades came thick and fast: the NME John Peel Award for Innovation in 2007, Kerrang! Awards (including Best Live Band), with sales of their debut now pushing 250,000 worldwide and frankly silly statistics, like the one about their single ‘Sorry, You’re Not A Winner’ having clocked up 6.3million plays on YouTube.

And so onto Common Dreads then, an album whose politicised ‘people power’ beginnings were inspired by the band joining fellow St Albans’ residents to fight against Tesco when the supermarket chain unveiled plans to build a big new store on a green patch of land. “It was the first time we actively got involved in something like that,” smiles Rou. “And, collectively, we won.”

Musically, there are still twists of Refused’s screamo punk in there, but also the everyday colloquial man-in-the-street chats of The Streets’ Mike Skinner and nods towards The Prodigy, the most pumpin' drum & bass, the most euphoric of trance, Altern-8 and even some of the darkest of dubstep too. More than anything though Common Dreads is an album destined to unite the tribes, divide the critics and thoroughly satisfy anyone who has witnessed the mad live spectacle that is Enter Shikari.

“The main thing we stand for is unity,” concludes Rou. “Although it’s fair to say this is a political album, we’re aware that we don’t want to preach ideas - our only solution to today’s problems is to get together, share ideas and have fun. Because ultimately that’s the Enter Shikari way. You’re only young once, so positivity during dark times is as important to us as anything else.”

Get on it.

meet the band Enter Shikari
Rou Reynolds - vocals / electronics
Rory Clewlow - guitar / backing vocals
Chris Batten - bass / vocals
Rob Rolfe - drums

Do you also would like to share your opinion? If so, please register or login here.

Details

Popular Songs

New Songs

Tracklisting

Enter Shikari - Common Dreads