Enter Shikari: The Forum, Hatfield, The Spark Tour — Review
Enter Shikari’s gig at The Forum has been awaited with feverish anticipation ever since the post-hardcore four-piece announced that after five studio albums and several world tours, they were coming home. Luckily, Head of Music Alex West was there to report back.
On the day that Trump’s UK visit got into full-swing and protestors lined the streets of the capital, some 43 miles north history was being made in a very different way.
Just a few minutes away from the town that birthed one of Britain’s, and the world’s, all-time great bands, a 1900 person capacity, all-standing venue was being prepared for a gig that will go down as one of their most iconic. Enter Shikari are a band capable of filling out and entertaining huge arenas, but in this most intimate and homely of settings, they packed even more of a punch.
After a raucous pair of support sets from Eskimo Club and Blackpool’s Boston Manor (pictured above), the lights came on again and the crowd of mixed ages rushed to the bar once more to down their last round of overpriced pints. The PA pounded out alternative rock classics as fans joined in the singing, with the inevitable chants of “Standing Like Statues/ And Still We Will Be Here” rising from the masses as 9pm drew nearer.
As the two gold lights filling the stage burned on, the sound engineers began testing out the quadrophonic sound system, showing us what a treat we were in for as a single word, “who”, echoed around the room from speaker to speaker. From there, the buzz grew, until finally the familiar sound of ‘The Spark’, the 50 second long, key-based opening track of Enter Shikari’s latest album, filled out the hall, and the band burst onto the stage as they built into the monster second track, ‘The Sights’.
Rou Reynolds, the band’s frontman and vocalist, was as vocal as ever as he danced about the stage in a grey suit, whilst the rest of the group frequently joined in the banter with the crowd. During the performance of ‘Juggernauts’ from their 2009 album ‘Common Dread’, guitarist Rory Clewlow couldn’t contain his smile, and Rou commented afterwards on the noise — the packed-in super-fans had already matched if not exceeded the loudest gigs on the band’s tour so far.
Enter Shikari are a band with famously forthright views on current affairs. Recent single ‘Take My Country Back’, according to Reynolds, talks of “an increasingly hostile right-wing media acting as a megaphone for what we now know were exaggerations and outright lies, amplified by fake bot accounts on Twitter, reinforcing the prejudices of the ill-informed.” Despite this, and the political backdrop to the gig, Rou’s chatter was more about inclusivity. As the local launched into a trademark monologue, he encouraged the audience to, regardless of who they support out there in the world, be united here in the ‘Last Garrison’. The frenzied performance of the eponymous track was accompanied by a circular projection in the background which morphed from an image of the sun to the patterns and themes explored on the band’s music video for Undercover Agents, created by long-time fan George Cheswick.
By this point, the roof was well and truly off the gig and heading to orbit. Rou, in his typically witty fashion, joked that there was one song left —in fairness the blockbuster beginning alone was probably worth the entry fee. Whilst the band prepared for the next track, ‘Anything Can Happen In The Next Half Hour…’, the first chorus of “It’s Coming Home” lifted up from the revellers, a regular feature of the night.
After that, Rou invited the audience to imagine they were in a forest, and breathe in through their noses and out through their mouths — “hopefully it’s not too sweaty out there yet”. Of course, this was the prelude to ‘Shinrin-yoku’, a whimsical and melodic track exploring the concept of forest bathing and the good it can do for the soul.
From there, we were taken on another journey as the band thumped through ‘Undercover Agents’, a beautifully slow burner which builds to a chorus as classic as any great Shikari song. Then came a medley of ‘Ghandi Mate, Ghandi’ into ‘Mothership’, before disaster struck: Sparky, the electronic device different members of the band had been using to generate the synthesised sounds throughout the set, had broken.
Cue one of the most authentic and charming moments of the night, as the band entertained the crowd for the four minutes it took to fix the machine. Guitarist Rory blamed the issue on the sweat in the room, asked the onlookers to “avert their eyes, because Sparky is about to get naked” and commented about how the method being used to fix it, ‘power cycling’, is just a fancy name for turning it off and back on again. Meanwhile, drummer Rob Rolfe asked the waiting horde if they’d like to see a magic trick that turned out to be a ‘got your nose’ style series of hand movements, and bassist Chris Batten pointed out that this couldn’t have happened at a worse time, as he reckoned no one had realised what was about to happen.
He was right — as Rou returned to the stage to a band-led sing-along of “Sparky’s on fire”, again stopping to note how rather than using a technical term, he’d asked the band to go from the “dugudugudu bit”, the band switched into an unexpected and feverishly received cover of ‘Insomnia’ by Faithless. Unsurprisingly, the atmosphere lulled for a moment at the restart, but it wasn’t long before we were back at the jet-fuelled highs of the scenes before.
The bouncers vs. crowdsurfers battle continued through the next series of epics as the pioneers seared through the old and the new, from ‘Destabilise’ and ‘Arguing With Thermometers’ from 2011’s ‘A Flash Flood of Colour’, to ‘Rabble Rouser’ from the recently released LP ‘The Spark’.
Then came an event exclusively possible in such an intimate setting, and one that had everyone present thankful for the privilege of witnessing it.
“This next track goes out to anyone who’s having a shit time” announced Rou, as simultaneously his fellow musicians departed from the stage. Picking up a guitar, he passed through the crowd and up the stairs to the side of the congregation, before appearing once more, atop the raised area above the main hall. There he performed a moving and affecting solo arrangement of ‘Airfield’, which had all of Shikari’s cult-like following singing along with every word, as the full band returned to the stage for the climax.
Following seamlessly from this we were hit with the jaw-dropping ‘Anaesthetist’, filled with the most potent mixture of electronic effects and heaviest lines which inevitably had the mosh-pits opening and erupting once more.
Almost apologetically, Reynolds asked the crowd if they really wanted the traditional ‘quick-fire round’ of 4 tracks in 8 minutes given that the moisture in the air was now palpable, and the most experienced of fans would have been feeling the heat. Conditions were about to get more tropical, of course, as the response was a resounding affirmative, and again the pits and crowd-surfers flowed as we were gifted with ‘Sorry You’re Not A Winner’, ‘Sssnakepit (Hamilton Remix)’, ‘…Meltdown’ and ‘The Jester’.
For the final two tracks, the atmosphere only grew more desperate with the frenetic zealots in attendance eager to milk as much from the night as possible. ‘Redshift’ was the dramatic penultimate number, and it was pursued closely by ‘Live Outside’’, though after this performance those in audience would have been forgiven for wanting to stay in, with Enter Shikari.
This was the night that had it all, from the biggest drops to the most intimate and magical of moments. If you’re still deciding whether to try and get tickets for the rest of the band’s tour, I urge you to go for it. Please don’t miss out.
Photos © Peter West
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