Buzzin Music

enter shikari - tribalism

While listening to Enter Shikari’s album ‘Tribalism’, which compliments the 2009’s album ‘Common Dread’s’, Abbie commented, ‘This isn’t giving me inspiration to write the review its just making me wanna rave’.  But the first thing that came  to mind when listening to the album was ‘Frickin’ awesome!’

The new tracks ‘Tribalism’ and ‘Thumper’ represent the Enter Shikari sound rather well, whilst ‘Thumper’ stays true to its name and brings a quite ‘Thumping’ beat, ‘Tribalism’ just makes you want to jump. It has a bit of an edge to it also which makes it different, it’s quite aggressive, but in a good way.

‘All eye’s on the saint’ explains the history of St.Alban’s and how it got its name. The actual song doesn’t stick to the normal ‘verse, chorus, verse…’ routine which makes it quite unique.

‘We can breathe in space’ is a bit more upbeat, as we say; it sounds more ‘happy’. It’s very metaphorical, harder to understand than the others.

‘Insomnia (live at Brixton ’07)’ is a really good cover, because Enter Shikari have elements of dance music in their sound and they seem to have renewed this track in their own unique way.  Also the crowd seem to be involved from the beginning, but I doubt they really knew what hit them.  A brilliant song, a great band to cover it. All is good.

‘Juggernauts – Nero Remix’ this is a very popular song and probably one of the most successful remixes, it’s pretty rave-y (yes, that is a word) right from the beginning, and something that I think could be played at a club without people thinking ‘what the hell is this?!’.

‘No sleep tonight – Qemists Remix’ the singing sounds very obscured, you can tell it’s been tampered with but none the less if it didn’t have the screaming in it, it would make a very good dance track. At about 1:50 into the song Abbie decided it was a good part to have a rave as the sound changed from a slightly darker sound to a more upbeat sound.

‘Wall – High contrast Remix’ this track is one of my favourites, I’m very glad they put a ‘Wall’ remix in their somewhere; it just HAD to be done.

‘No sleep tonight – Mitsabishi Remix’ this is a darker remix, it stands out from the others in that it’s not as ‘happy’ as the others but it’s still a truly amazing track.

‘Juggernauts – Blue Bear Remix’ this is one of Abbie’s favourites. It starts off pretty calm compared to many of the others and then it develops a catchy beat, while still continuing the calmness throughout. It’s just a track you can dance to and the lyrics stand out more than some of the others, which means you can sing along too.

‘No sleep tonight – Routs Remix’ it’s hard not to love this track. As per usual Rou astounded us with his DJ skills, even my DAD enjoyed a rave to this one!

‘No sleep tonight – LIGHTSGOBLUE (that’s right, they deserve capitals) Remix.’ After seeing LIGHTSGOBLUE twice, LIVE!,  we we’re very happy to see a track by them included. It’s just a brilliant example of their awesome work and also a pretty unique remix in the way it’s more electro than the others on the album.

‘Havoc A – Live at Rock City’ is a perfect example of how drum’n’bass/dubstep can be performed live, it’s also more calm than the other songs on ‘Common Dreads’.

‘Labyrinth – Live at Rock City’ is the only track from 2007’s ‘Take to the skies’ but it gives you an epic vibe of how amazing Enter Shikari are live and at how they make the audience feel very involved.

‘Hectic – Live at Rock City’. The beginning of this track  shows just how loved the band really are. What with the whistling, clapping and shizz, the crowd just sound like they are  going as crazy as Enter Shikari are, they sound like they’re really enjoying the performance and the song is just one big bang of epicness.

I don’t normally like live covers, but Enter Shikari just bring something more to the table. When I listen to them I feel like they’re not really in it for the fame and glory but more for the passion for their music and to have fun. Also I get a kind of buzz when I listen to them. Enter Shikari have a way of making the audience feel involved at their live gigs and that feeling finds it’s way through on their live recordings too.

Enter Shikari seem to have the same political views as us and many people don’t understand what they are  trying to get across. I’ve seen too many negative comments about them writing about politics too much but we’d rather they wrote about what they cared about rather than about things that don’t mean anything, like some musicians do.

We feel we’ve made a pretty fair review in the way that most of the reviews we’ve read are against them rather than giving them a chance. There is no point in people writing reviews if they are not going to be open-minded.

Which leads me to a negative thing about the lyrics Enter Shikari write, and that is just that they use really long words that we don’t understand, but luckily for us, there’s always Wikipedia!

Post by Carmen Leitelmayer and Abbie Rickman

Our reviewers, Carmen and Abbie are two sixteen year olds with a passion for music, this is their first review and we look forward to posting more from them in the future.