Enter Shikari - A Flash Flood of Colour Review

Contrary to your perceptions; Post-Hardcore does not equate to pornstars in berets standing around talking about their feelings. It’s actually a musical genre that people, like me, can lump together that would normally be titled as Emo, Screamo, Goth-Pop and sound completely pretentious doing so.

Fortunately, for Post-Hardcore band Enter Shikari, whose first album had all the stereotypes that made the album a samey, if consistently decent debut, their follow-up Common Dreads decided to incorporate elements from Dubstep to create an album that delivered neat ideas but overall, sounded muddled and confused.

Three years later, the North London outfit have entered the difficult realms of album three and I have to admit, the only reason I keep coming back to Enter Shikari like a battered housewife is the odd glimmer of something better amongst the filler. I liked Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour which gave way to buying Take to the Skies for three pounds in a sale. When Common Dreads came about; it was stand-alone single We Can Breathe in Space… which peaked my curiosity.

For A Flash Flood of Colour; it was Destabilise. With its big beats and bombastic feel, it was a song that did what Common Dreads couldn’t do consistently or as epically. So naturally, I gave their latest album a listen, not really knowing what to expect but some what optimistic.

From the word go, things are different and in a good way. Opener System… is basically a two minute poem with string synths and lead singer/shouter Rou Reynolds using a metaphor consisting of house, cliffs and childhood career aspirations. This opener flows into the aptly titled …Meltdown which uses the same strings but is a massive, rocky beast with electronic drums and a harmonic chorus.

Following up is lead single Sssnakepit which combines a heavily sampled, bassy verse which flows into a fuzzy with slight chiptune influence chorus which is stupendously fun (it also doesn’t help there’s a, and I’m not joking; Louis Armstrong impression at the end).

Sadly, after ploughing through the first three tracks with such momentum and ambition; the album slows down to a crawl with Stalemate; which starts off as an acoustic number but then morphs into a by-the-numbers, radio friendly unit shifter. Search Party is again a tad slower but more in-line with the rest of the album. It has a brief bridge which teases better things but returns to the generic chorus and isn’t too memorable.

Things go back to normal with Arguing with Thermometres; a dubstep heavy track with issues such as social decline and war discussed in the lyrics. Gandhi Mate, Gandhi which, starting off with a minute long rant, throws everything against the wall in by far, the loudest song on the album. Like Sssnakepit; the band shows their playful side with the song breaking down in the middle and a comical exchange which reveals the origins of the songs title.

Sadly, Ganhdi Mate, Gandhi is the album's high-point and after that, it slows down to a crawl. Things get slightly better with Hello Tyrannosaurus, Meet Tyrannicide which returns with sampled strings as a backing track, sampled vocals, a lot of electronic soundscapes and standard guitars. Despite this, it somehow maintains a rocky edge and remains one of the albums more interesting tracks.

The album comes to a close with Constellations; a slow, soft key track which sounds eerily similar to SRXT by Bloc Party. It’s more along the lines of Stalemate but suits the political backdrop and reveals in more positive vibes than the despair and anger that’s prominent throughout.

It’s an odd listen as A Flash Flood of Colour showcases Enter Shikari as a far more complex and ambitious band then their peers. It’s an album heavily focused on the ugly side of humanity and the ultimate pointlessness of bloodshed and conflict.

In short; imagine a young Billy Bragg and co with a Kaos Pad listening to Rage Against the Machine (Hard I know). The end result is an angry album with pure unadulterated rage and interesting concepts, but slower and at times, more generic tracks to break up the flow.

It’s by far Enter Shikari’s most accessible album and there’s far more good than bad, but unlike their previous two efforts, it simply doesn’t flow as well together. It has stand-out tracks, but a few too many pointless moments and the album suffers for it.

It isn’t a flash flood as such, but several. It’s just there are too many enveloping, grey clouds to remind you of the bigger picture.

6/10

H