Enter Shikari’s new album The Spark would be more at home with an Imagine Dragons’ album then the UK band’s own 2007 debut Take To The Skies. Gone are the shredding metal riffs and the shrill techno drum fills and sirens as well as the screamo vocals, in their place is an extremely well-produced soft rock sound with vocalist Rou Reynolds rich British voice cleanly sitting at the front of the mix. Okay, the ‘rap’ is still there but the ‘metal’ is hard to find.
Single ‘Rabble Rouser’, is essentially a rap about attacking foes with a sack of screwdrivers that sits atop a deep almost post-dubstep (think SBTRKT) rolling rhythm, the chorus itself barely cracks into anything beyond a slightly amplified yelp.
‘Take My Country Back‘ despite its ostensible thematic connotations for a most British of bands, actually seems to be anti-Brexit by opening with the lyrics shouted in a punk rock style over what is essentially a punk rock tempo: “Don’t wanna take my country back / I wanna take my country forward.”
For a band that ten years ago tapped into the punk/metal scene with a genuinely anti-hegemonic sound, one could contend from The Spark that Enter Shikari are now well and truly part of the mainstream.
