Enter Shikari is the Best Band You Haven’t Heard Of
If you haven’t heard of the British rock band Enter Shikari before, boy are you in for a treat. What started out as a Saves the Day/Thrice hardcore band in the early 2000s has evolved into one of the most sophisticated, original and consistent rock bands operating today.
Their lyrics tend to be about the emptiness of modern, materialistic living, and their music videos are often colorful, optimistic and techno-punk themed treatises that are an absolute visual delight. Like mini-episodes of Black Mirror injected with an overall vibe of fun. It’s that element of fun that really sets Enter Shikari apart. Even though the songs themselves are hard rock, arguably bordering on hardcore, and the lyrics focus on often dark subject matter, the fact that it’s clear the band is having fun and is in good spirits infuses the music with an optimism that makes it all that much more infectious.
Live Outside, and its associated video, for example, details a world where people are working as wage slaves in a factory, kept happy by VR fantasies and forced prescription drugs. Another recent video, The Dreamer’s Hotel, features the throwback lofi visual style and psychedelic video editing that I’ve grown to really enjoy. Just to illustrate the full visual range of Enter Shikari’s videos, their video for Undercover Agent is a sci-fi pixel art video game voyage into outer space.
Stylistically, Enter Shikari is totally in sync with this site, across the board, from the themes of its music to its visual style, to its focus on sci-fi, philosophy, tech, neon cyberpunk, east meets west psychedelica, folksy pastoral romanticism, vaguely religious symbolism. If you’re a fan of anything on this site, there’s no question you’ll become a fast fan of Enter Shikari as well.
Enter Shikari is not a new band. They have a shocking depth of work that includes 6 full-length studio albums that you can totally sink your teeth into. If you’re looking for that next band to throw on while taking a walk, killing it at the gym, cleaning, or even just looking for some undeniably killer music videos to binge-watch, Enter Shikari is the band for you.
Their latest album, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, dropped last month and it’s quickly become one of my favorite albums of the year. Some of my favorite tracks include the aforementioned The Dreamer’s Hotel, as well as ‘thē kĭñg’. Nothing is True and Everything is Possible features an extremely solid tracklist, not to mention one of the coolest pieces of album art in recent memory; a Romanesque statue whose lips are crossed out with 2020 neon.
Because it’s such a prolific band that’s been around for so many years, here are some other favorite tracks I’d suggest throwing onto a quick playlist and digesting:
Of all their tracks, though, Live Outside remains my favorite.
The band reminds me a lot of Bring Me the Horizon, but with a bit of a brighter color palette. Do I like it better than Bring Me the Horizon? Whew. Tough call. I would say not, because BMTH really hits me hard, but Enter Shikari is way up there. It’s a fantastic band. I feel like Enter Shikari is more consistent across the board, but BMTH’s highs spike up really high, so it’s hard to compare the two.
I highly, highly recommend that you check out Enter Shikari if you haven’t already. They only have 191k subscribers on YouTube at the time of this article and it’s a real travesty.
That about does it for the Enter Shikari music recommendation. Be sure to check out the Music Section for more recommendations like this, and follow me on Twitter to stay up to day with music recommendations and movie/tv reviews.
