Take to the Skies

by

Enter Shikari

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I first heard Enter Shikari off the game Maden NFL 08. I never expected them to become my favorite band. After i heard OK, Time for Plan B, i thought if i like one song i'll probably like more! I downloaded a few more songs and they were all masterpieces! Mothership, Enter Shikari, Sorry You're Not A Winner. I finally decided to buy the album. I stopped by a local record store and they dont carry Enter Shikari so i requested an order. I got the album and i listened to it all afternoon. I just love how the songs progress and there are many different genres of music in it! They soon became my favorite band and Take To The Skies became my favorite album. They're new music is not near as good as the 2007 Enter Shikari. They are still my favorite band, and they're new stuff is pretty good, but compared to Take To The Skies, it sucks! Best band, best album!! (In my opinion of course)

These newbies are apparently striving for a new brand of rocktronica, mixing hardcore and technical metal with rave-style keyboards and sequencers. This might sound good on paper, but execution is another matter. Rather than forming a sound of their own, Enter Shikari have only created an awkward mash-up of incompatible styles. The rock side of the band is perfectly competent, with a strong backdrop of technical riffs, pummeling time shifts, high-flying doomy passages, and even some Cure-like trance balladry. But the problem is the band's electronic side, with very cheesy keyboard and synthesizer patterns that make the whole endeavor sound like overblown 80s arena metal, backed by a guy who can't stop playing with his electronic toys and delivered by a band that can't figure out how best to exercise its musical chops. This tendency is tragically apparent in misguided mini-epics like "Labyrinth" and "Jonny Sniper," while the four interludes are annoyingly undeveloped experiments in sequencing. The Enter Shikari sound would work better if the keyboard sound was more sinister and if the electronic beats were more integrated with what the human drummer is doing. They come close in "Mothership" and "Sorry, You're Not a Winner" but the sound just doesn't come together. Maybe this band will achieve life in the future, but so far they've only managed to force together incompatible components into a Frankenstein's monster that can't get up. [~doomsdayer520~]