LIVE REVIEW: Enter Shikari – Victoria Warehouse, Manchester – 15/02/2024

Surely we all know how this goes by now, right? Enter Shikari + big rooms = a show that goes down to total storm. To be fair, this one is something of a departure from much of the rest of the tour, in which they’ve been planting themselves in arenas as such an obvious next step for a band of their colossal aspirations. For this run’s two Manchester dates, they find themselves in the Victoria Warehouse, a sizable space by itself that isn’t burdened with statuses of ‘one of the biggest indoor venues in Europe’ like the city’s own arena. Had they have chosen to make that jump, there’d have been minimal doubts of their abilities of their abilities within it—being dubbed one of the UK’s premier live acts doesn’t come from nowhere, y’know—but for a band whose background is rooted as much in rave music and drum ‘n’ bass as it is rock, there’s a certain serendipity of a big warehouse housing them for a couple of nights.

As for who they’re bringing along…well, you’ve got another extremely volatile, extremely vaunted live act waiting in the wings, and when you factor in the overall calibre of everything to come, NOAHFINNCE feels like a clear bottom rung. The likelihood is this just isn’t his crowd, more than anything. For the kids for whom Yungblud is the epitome of punk, there’s far more resonance to be had than for Shikari’s generally older audience who are likely past this. (“Does anyone here really love TikTok?” Noah asks at one point, going down like a lead balloon and evidently trying to save face immediately.) Still, for someone who broke out among the modern online wave of pop-punk, there’s a fairly organic quality to like among who generally utilitarian it is. The right touchstones of Busted and Green Day and all those other formative acts are in place, with Noah having the confidence to claw back some points among it all. Scumbag is the easy highlight, though, with the punched-in beat that’s the most grab-you-by-the-throat of anything here, and gestures towards something potentially more than a rote—if okay—pop-punk nostalgia sesh.

But if you want something much closer to the night’s scheduled action, Fever 333 are where it’s at. Long have the legends of Jason Butler’s live antics been told, especially during his letlive. days, and he continues to deliver on that front, first and foremost. Despite not scampering up stage scaffolding as he is frequently wont to do (he says himself he’s under the weather, which might contribute to that), there’s still not an inch of this stage he hasn’t claimed as his own by the end of the very first song Burn It. Guitarist Brandon Davis and bassist April Kae do an admirable job at keeping up, but it’s impossible to dampen Butler’s status as the figurehead here. He’s just impossibly magnetic as a presence, parlayed into a persona of activism that touches on the current climate in Palestine and a celebration of people of colour in the scene, spoken with such conviction and passion.

Of course, to sideline the music is doing a major disservice to what arguably ties all of this together. This is post-hardcore without its teeth filed down, gnashing constantly with its serrated metal edges jutting on a song like Bite Back. In terms of its own sharpness, this is pitch-perfect across the board, particularly when Butler breaks out the high-end screams and the apex of his intensity is put on full display. It also goes without saying that it all sounds enormous too, clearly suited for the arena crowd the band might not be getting tonight, but still works to the same standard. Something this vital isn’t kept down by a slightly downsized environment; if anything, you get the fuller Fever 333 experience when it can rage and ricochet all the more easily.

As for Enter Shikari, you’d almost be inclined to believe the opposite is true. As a band who’ve become intrinsically tied to live spectacle more and more over the years, them being forced to pare back what was likely tailor-made for arenas would appear to throw a spinner in the works before it’s even begun. Logistically, you can’t be having drones flying through a venue this relatively small, after all. But for a band who’ve never been satisfied with doing things by halves, it’s not like settling for some de-spined performance is an option. If anything has been removed (and other than perhaps some of the scale, it’s hard to discern if it has), there’s nothing really severed from the experience. Visually they’ll stun throughout, flanked by columns, walls and onstage ramps of LED screens as a fully immersive package. Naturally, the confetti cannons and plumes of sparks are present and accounted for—as for any arena-level band—but it speaks to Enter Shikari’s creativity that they’ll not settle for that. The round-the-stage spotlights forming a bespoke cage for Jailbreak is such a cool bit of design language, and Rou Reynolds climbing atop one of the columns before ‘diving in’ for an escape artist-type sequence to play is the kind of indulgence you’re permitted at this stage.

Moreover, it speaks to the fearlessness that Enter Shikari have become synonymous with in their music. As a band who’ve never bent over or kowtowed to trends or industry machinations, the pure exuberance, both sonically and visually, blares out with a white-hot force. They may be well-oiled with the express purpose of filling enormo-rooms, but that doesn’t mean they have to move off the knife’s edge of exploding, or forgo an obviously punk sensibility in doing their own thing. That partially feels like the reason why so many remixes and callbacks to drum ‘n’ bass and jungle will be interwoven and spliced into their original articles. Anaesthetist especially hits hard, already coated in thick grime and noir, but as that crumbles and a drum ‘n’ outro reveals itself—resplendent with lasers and cavernous bass—it just gets the pulse racing a bit more.

25 years deep, there’s still unpredictably and excitement to be found. That’s kind of unprecedented, honestly, and you get the feeling that Enter Shikari know that. They’ve never been a band to sit still for too long, and ducking and weaving through a career of metastasising genre that’s always produced highlights is the ideal way to illustrate that. Older material especially holds its own in that regard, in the bundle of Stand Your Ground; This Is Ancient Land, Enter Shikari and Mothership that have more of that strict hardcore foundation to them. It still absolutely holds a place in the set as a whole; a screamed-back chorus of “Go tell all your friends / That this is the end!” is worth it alone. As for Sorry You’re Not A Winner, that too is subject to its Pendulum remix filtered in at the end to really get some rafters creaking, though for a late-2000s kid ingrained in the most forward-thinking fare Britrock had to offer, those three claps alone will never not trigger a Pavlovian giddiness.

Now, however, Enter Shikari are in an era defined by their most colourful, exuberant work to date, and naturally that has some of the longest legs of all. The first taster comes in Giant Pacific Octopus (i don’t know you anymore), with its juddering angles and Reynolds’ accompanying guitar that crackle with palpable excitability. The same is true of goldfish ~’s mammoth chorus and the searing light of It Hurts, and the ever-titanic satellites* * which has already more than earned its keep as a live staple. Right now, this feels like such an integral part of the Enter Shikari live experience, tantamount with everything else that’s made it so robust over the years. They’re quite simply incapable of putting a foot wrong right now, throwing out ideas and creative endeavours to make the spectacle as gripping and all-encompassing as it could possibly be. A Kiss For The Whole World x stands as the closer, seeing the return of the sparks and capping off a display of glorious, 100%-earned excess in precisely the way it should be. After all, taking a show designed for the biggest stages in the land and cramming it unbothered into this warehouse just seems like the peak of the Shikari brand, doesn’t it?

Words by Luke Nuttall