Words: Courtesy of Danielle Brownsill

Pix: Courtesy of Leanne Sutherland

Enter Shikari – Blood, Sweat and Hotel Olympics

Keele University is never normally such a noisy place to be on a Sunday evening. Tonight is different. The place is heaving and full of excited Enter Shikari fans waiting to see their heroes.

It was no easy task negotiating my way inside the venue through the throng. Once inside, I meet their tour manager, who is also lead vocalist Rou’s father. He had arranged for me to be there at 7pm, but he informs me that he his having trouble getting the boys all together and awake at the same time. No easy task I would imagine. Having played a sold out Rock city the previous night, they had been to an after-show party and they had stayed awake until five in the morning playing “Hotel Olympics”.

“Never stay in the same hotel as them” Keith advises me. He leaves me in the lobby whilst he goes to see whether the boys are ready or not yet. After a short wait he returns to inform me that Rou has just woken up and that he has him, bassist Chris and guitarist Rory together in the same room. Drummer Rob appeared to be MIA. He takes me through to meet them. As I arrive in their dressing room, they are watching “Planet of the Apes” on the television. The three greeted me as I entered the room. Rory manages to excuse himself from the interview and get back to watching the film, claiming that it would be too complicated for me to interview three of them at once. Ten out of ten for excuse making and as the excuse seemed to insinuate he was doing it to make life easier for me; I didn’t have the heart to stop him watching his film.

Me: How was Rock City Yesterday?

Chris: Yeah really good.  The crowd was wicked. We had a bit of an after party last night so we’re a bit tired. So apologies today.

Me: Yeah I heard about hotel Olympics from your tour manager who has advised that I should never stay in the same hotel as you!

Both: (laugh)

Chris: (laughs) Sometimes it gets a little rowdy. That (hotel Olympics) was something we were going to do in Australia.

Rou: Yeah. We didn’t do the whole Olympics yesterday. We just did the 100 metre four legged race. We line up next to each other on all fours and race to the end of the corridor.

Chris: We do another one where we fill up a hotel bathroom with bubble bath and someone hides a bottle of Jager in there and we have to find it.

Me: I would win.

Both: Yeah?

Me: I can sniff Jagermeister out a mile off.

Chris: You’d be up against some tough competition. We’ve made the decision that this is gonna be the third night in a row we’re gonna have an after-show so we’re gonna be totally dead by tomorrow.
Me: The crowd gets pretty hectic at your shows. Have you ever injured yourselves on stage?

Chris: No. Actually I did nearly kill myself. Rou – your dad Keith saved my life. When we were in Hull, I went up and stood on the barrier, had my guitar on and everything, I started falling back and I couldn’t stop myself and I thought, shit, I know what’s behind me, I’m gonna smack my head on the monitors and knock myself out my legs kind of went over Keith’s head and I ended up on his shoulders.

Rou: That’s cool. That’s like a trust building exercise. I think the worst one for me was head-butting my sampler. I still have a mark somewhere there (points to a place in his hair).

Me: Did you carry on?

Rou: Yeah. Someone came on stage and wiped the blood off the sampler and gaffer-taped my head.

Chris: I actually split my chin open at one gig. I was head-banging and I managed to chin the top of my bass. There was blood dripping down. I bet it looked pretty cool. I wish I had done it earlier in the gig so that there would have been pictures but it was too late.

Me: I saw you in Kerrang all covered in tin-foil for your new video. (We Can Breathe In Space; They Just Don’t Want Us To Escape).

Chris: Yeah we were there for the whole day. We couldn’t take the suits off because we were gaffer-taped into them. It took us a bout an hour to get into them then we were stuck there. We had to do about 10-15 takes straight off.

Me: Bet they were really hot.

Rou: We were well roasted.

Me: When is the new album coming out or have you not got a release date yet?

Chris: Not an official release date but we are aiming for March/April time.

Me: Have you got a title for it yet?

Chris: No.

Rou: We will wait and see what it’s coming out like when we can give it a proper listen all the way through. When it’s complete.

Me: Well you’ve got to have a good title. You can’t have a rubbish one.

Chris: Yeah….

Rou: “You can’t have a rubbish title” - that would be a good title!

Me: If it is I want accreditation in the album sleeve! Are you really nervous putting out a second album, obviously your first album did amazingly well.

Chris: It was quite hard when we got back off tour and had the task of sitting down and writing new tunes. We kind of lost it for a week then we began to get some good riffs and lyrics and we were going again.

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Me: Are you happy with the new songs for the album?

Rou: Yeah we just can’t wait to get them properly recorded really. I’m quite anxious to see what people make of it. The first album everyone went along saying how original it was and stuff. The main worry for me is whether these new songs will live up to the hype of the other “Take to the Skies” stuff.

Me: You have a pretty dedicated bunch of fans, I’m sure they will be receptive. There were people here today from 1PM.

Chris: (disappointed) Oh they were there from seven am yesterday!

Me: Ah well that’s Stokies. They are probably all hung-over.

Both: (Laugh)

Chris: Getting there at 7 is pretty extreme to be honest. Our fans are very very loyal.

Me: When you started the band did you ever think you would be where you are now?

Rou: We were pretty much just doing it ‘cus we wanted to. We never really thought too far ahead. I remember when we were in school when Hundred Reasons were at their peak and I really loved them. I remember thinking I’d love to tour with them, to tour at that level, and they ended up supporting us on our last production tour. That’s pretty nuts.

Me: You have toured with some awesome bands Hundred Reasons, Billy Talent. Years ago you played with Blessed by a Broken Heart. You played a tiny pub venue in Stoke called the Glebe.

Chris: God yeah, years ago.

Me: I’ve got the tour poster somewhere.

Chris: That was the one with the skull and the snakes.

Me: On the pink background. Do you keep little things like that? Do you each have a little Enter Shikari box?

Rou: My Mum does.
                                                                                                                                             
Me: Aww!

Chris: I keep the tour laminates. They are always nice.

At this point the tour manager Keith walks in holding what can only be described as a crate of Chinese food, exclaiming that the “scrubbers” as he refers to them haven’t given him enough money. I decide to leave them in peace to eat their dinner, after wishing them good luck with the show.

As expected, I did not need to wish the band good luck. Despite their on-stage apologies for being as Rou put it “a bit loosey goosey” and a couple of technical blips, the band manage to whip the crowd up into frenzy. At one point it seemed that no-one in the crowd was out of the mosh pit. The room was dark apart from neon lights and filled with atmospheric smoke from a smoke machine. Glow sticks were flying around the crowd like some kind of fluorescent fireflies. At one point some members of the crowd formed a small human pyramid much to the approval of the band and the rest of the crowd. You could tell that the band members were having as much fun on stage as the jumping, sweating crowd were. Despite the bass amp breaking just as they played their new single the crowd stayed right with the band, and the band stayed with the crowd before the encore whilst techs fixed the broken equipment, a beautiful demonstration of how much the fans love their idols and vice versa.

The first time Enter Shikari in played Stoke-on-Trent they played a tiny pub venue, then the Sugarmill and now Keele University. This is a band that keeps getting better and better with every live show. You can’t help but feel as you watch them that we haven’t seen the peak of their career just yet.

Enter Shikari’s new single “We can Breathe in Space, They Just Don’t Want Us To Escape” is out on the 3rd November 2008.