26-06-2007 Enter Shikari

Support:Phaedra list, Malkovich;  venue: Waterfront
By: Wouter van de Kamp

I was quite eager to see Enter Shikari once again. Their show in Doornroosje, Nijmegen (NET) in January this year was awesome. On my way to the entrance I stumbled upon the same scene as in Doornroosje: lots of underaged emokids queuing up for the tickets. Entering the sold out Waterfront I found this actually quite ok, because with my 175 cm I felt like quite lengthy and could oversee the crowd and could see the stage properly without having to stand on my toes.

Phaedra List opened this evening. This Zwijndrecht based emo/rock/hardcore band with clean vocals and screams was a good support act considering their genre, but they couldn’t really convince me. Neither could they convince the usually quite easy to please kids. I saw some heads moving hesitatingly up and down, but that was it. Odd that Face Tomorrow took this band out on tour. But perhaps the kids were saving their energy for the next bands of which the first one was Malkovich. I’ve seen this band about 10 times by now and I still don’t know what to think of this band. This Essent Award winning band makes an odd combination of hardcore, emo, metal, punk, jazz and a lot other genres and continually send you barking up the wrong tree. With songtitles that only have numbers they were able to entice the crowd to start up some moshpits.

Now that the muscles were warmed up it was time for what we were all waiting for: Enter Shikari. Gaining their fame through the profile website MySpace they already got a recording contract before their 2007 release called Take to the Skies. And yes, this was what the crowd was waiting for. Jumping, running and all other physically possible movements…the   band went totally crazy. Combining lots of techno and trance samples with emo,  metalcore, post-hardcore and trance they certainly got the crowd running. If they can handle the fame and tour life this might very well become a huge band. The crowd knew all the sing alongs and weren’t hesitating to show that. During the technoparts the band members put away their instruments and started technodancing including the drummer who, hanging from a lighttrust, made an inward somersault. 

In all and every way this was a great performance, though probably far too short for most kids. They just haven’t got any more songs. I am really curious as to what this band will bring in the future.

Pictures of this gig can be found here

Links:
Enter Shikari official
Enter Shikari Myspace
Malkovich official
Phaedra list