Featured image: Press/Jamie Waters
In their 20+ years as a band, Enter Shikari have reached the upper echelons where they can call themselves bonafide headliners. Their most recent achievement is landing their first UK number one album for last year’s, A Kiss for the Whole World. Now, we are in the throes of their subsequently titled world tour, the first of two shows in Manchester, and to summarise: the pressure’s on, night two. You have a lot to live up to.
The cold and uninviting warehouse space becomes full, almost suffocating, by the time 21:11 rolls around. Darkness falls. A spotlight shines down on lead vocalist Rou Reynolds. “There was a house in a field on the side of the cliff…” The spoken word intro of ‘Systems’ reverberates, before segueing into ‘Meltdown’. Immediate chaos ensues. About a third of the crowd partakes in a pit, as well as crowd surfing, in which the members of supporting act Noahfinnce join in.
From there, Enter Shikari take us on a journey through their discography, complete with a genius use of lighting and imagery on the big screen. For example, ‘Jailbreak’ makes use of the floor lights, which shoot up to resemble prison bars which Reynolds proceeds to break with his hands. In ‘Anaesthetist’, they treat us to visuals of a heart monitor. The calming ballad of the night, ‘TINA’, gives us a pretty looking animated city at nightfall, lights flickering in the windows, an appropriate contrast to the dazzling light show we see throughout most of the set.
Reynolds, sitting on top of a 50-foot platform, declares that there will be pauses in between the set to allow everyone to really feel the emotions of the songs. This moment of mellowness is a far cry from his stage diving before we even reached the 15 minute mark. The pit grows bigger and bigger until it reaches a leviathan state during the encore. There, we get a slowed down version of their classic ‘Sorry, You’re Not a Winner’, before concluding with the new album’s title track.
This barely scratches the surface of what happens during the set. You just need to see it for yourselves. You could call this EDM with instruments and metalcore vocals, which may be disappointing to some. However, if you’re looking to dance, sing and stare in awe at the technical brilliance of the performance, it doesn’t get much better than this.
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