Enter Shikari - Live in Nottingham - May 2022 - Review

Enter Shikari Live Review

Enter Shikari are probably one of the most overlooked bands in the British rock scene. Despite being six albums into their career, having a distinguishable sound and a big favourite among rock fans, they always seem to be sidelined by artists such as Bring Me The Horizon and Architects, and as great as they are, people seem to forget how amazing this band is.

I first got into Enter Shikari when they headlined Download Pilot last year (fun fact, that festival is where I got my job writing for TotalNtertainment!) and they really impressed me, despite not being a fan for years prior. Ever since I have loved their distinctive sound and ambitious production, and for me, they’re the trendsetters of the rock music scene.

The first thing that I noticed even before the band came onto the stage was their incredibly precise attention to detail. From fifteen minutes before the band came onto the stage, there was a voiceover that kept saying “x minutes until you descend into The Great Unknown” and fifteen other messages that played every single minute until the lights went down. This is fantastic for not just the anticipation, but also from a storytelling perspective. This era is certainly their most ambitious and they really showed that within the show. Their stage set was one of the best I have ever seen inside Rock City, not just as a set itself, but with how it’s perfectly designed to fit their era, and the lighting design is maybe some of the best I have ever seen, even on bigger shows in much larger venues. From the lighting on the stage to the carefully programmed laser show to the confetti being set off at the perfect times, the band have thought about even the smallest details when it comes to how the show came together.

Further proof of the band’s exquisite attention to detail shows within its setlist. They played twenty songs, all of which are fan favourites, all of them show off the band’s versatility and are ordered in a way that gives the band and the crowd room to breathe. All of it is curated with such care and compassion in a way that I haven’t seen done in such a long time. They thought incredibly carefully about which song should the lasers be introduced in, where to add the slower songs, what songs show off the best of what they can do and which twenty songs out of the 92 originals they’ve released would satisfy fans the most. So much care, work and dedication went into making that setlist perfect, and you could tell.

Another thing to point out is that the chemistry between the four members of Enter Shikari was sublime. Each and every one of them put their hearts and souls into this show, trying to make it the very best thing they could. The whole band were in sync with each other, they knew exactly what to do and it worked a treat. My main issue with a lot of gigs by bands such as Enter Shikari is that their music is so epic on record but they can’t execute it in a live setting (see Nothing But Thieves last year), but between the four of them, Enter Shikari pulled it off! They had synthesisers that were being played instead of relying on a backing track for the more complex sounds, they made everything work, and that is seriously impressive. Another thing I noticed was after the encore, frontman Rou Reynolds came onto the stage to perform an acoustic version of “Constellations”, and he wanted everyone to be quiet. He performed the song and didn’t even use his microphone, so all we could hear was his raw vocals, and that made this show feel that much more intimate. It’s a move I’ve never seen done before, and I believe that it’s a spark of pure genius. Also, the energy in the room was completely mind blowing. From the second the band came on, there were mosh pits, clapping, crowd-surfing, singing, dancing, crying, circle pits, everything! Everyone was having the time of their lives, everyone who was there was genuinely excited to be there (besides a man in the back who just seemed to have his arms crossed looking miserable the entire time), and even more impressively, none of this was provoked by the band, all of this energy came from the crowd, the band didn’t even tell them to do anything at all.

At the start of this article, I explained that Enter Shikari are probably one of the most overlooked bands in the British rock scene. Tonight’s show is proof of that very point. From some insanely impressive attention to detail in every aspect of what I saw tonight, to some of the best stage and lighting design I’ve maybe ever seen in any live event I’ve been to, to some excellent band chemistry, Enter Shikari have it all, and I hope that in their next era, they can finally get the attention they deserve instead of being one of the most overlooked bands in the rock scene.

Ranking: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Setlist: