entershikari2012

Interview: Enter Shikari vocalist Rou Reynolds on the band's US successes

With the success of Enter Shikari’s third full-length A Flash Flood Of Colour, released earlier this year, Britain’s finest genre-melting rockers have taken the entire world by storm this year. Vocalist Rou Reynolds took a few minutes to chat with AP about Thailand, the success and messages behind the record and anti-politics as they were wrapping up their mainland European tour before they head over to the US with letlive. and At The Skylines.

Interview: Matthew Colwell

 

You guys recorded A Flash Flood Of Colour all the way over in Bang Saray, Thailand last year. What was behind the choice to go all the way across the world? I know you worked with Dan Weller again who did guitar work on the last record, so why the location?We basically got offered a really good deal because the studio is really new and they’re trying to get a lot more western bands over there. They offered us a deal that we couldn’t refuse. We got pictures of the place and we just felt like we had the best of luck. We went over and spent about a month over there. It was incredible. It was an awesome studio with awesome people running [it]—it was a very relaxed experience.

Studio time can be long and arduous, but did you guys get out at all? How was hanging out in Thailand?
We were actually literally right in the middle of a jungle. It was like a two-hour drive to Bangkok. The nearest village was a little fishing village that was completely untouched by tourism and western influence—it was incredible. It was a really picturesque, quaint village, so that was amazing to see. Apart from that, though, we didn’t really adventure out from the studio. Normally we’re quite adventurous and inquisitive, but we’re so excited by the tunes and the studio, so we pretty much just spent 20 hours a day in the studio recording.

 

Now that A Flash Flood Of Colour has been out for a few months, how are the songs and reception feeling to you? Are they going over the way you’d hope live?
It’s really great. We just started playing them live—we did Soundwave [in Australia]  and that was the first big test. The reception for the new stuff was far more energetic than the other stuff. I think if kids are still going the most crazy for the tracks off the first record, it can be a little disheartening, but all of the new tracks were really going off [amazingly], so that was great to see. It’s such a morale boost playing fresh material when you’ve been touring the world for several years playing the same old stuff over and over again. It was exciting. We were just itching to get back out again.

The reception definitely seems to be positive and your audience is expanding rapidly. You’ve said in the past that Enter Shikari was just a hobby that got out of hand and here you are with a record that charts at number 4 in the UK and 5 on the US Hard Rock charts. How are you utilizing the success that comes with being a fairly successful rock band nowadays?
It’s quite a foreign experience to anyone having people come up to you with varying degrees of emotions. Some people will come up and be like, “The tunes helped me through this” and say that we’re sort of a voice for them. It’s a crazy thing to have to take in. We never expected or even aspired to be that and we’ve just fell into this position of responsibility. There are few too many bands out there not really saying anything.

We’ve always thought of art as having certain responsibilities because there’s no exterior motive. There are no underlying things that could lead to a corrupt message. Art is out there fighting for its own sake. It should be sincere and honest and I think that’s what’s made us responsive to use this position that we’ve created with art to hopefully share positivity and inject a bit of empowerment into people’s lives.

I definitely think you guys have always had honest and open opinions on issues whether they be political, social, philosophical or anything else and that’s helped show people those goals you’ve made. Now, I read that you called this album “anti-politics.” Can you expand on that at all? The record definitely touches on some political subjects, so what exactly do you mean by that?
I guess the phrase “anti-political” could stand on two levels: First is just semantics. People read the word political and just turn straight away. I know I did. When people described us as a political band, it always confused me. There is certainly no mention of influence of politics whatsoever—nothing could be more uninteresting to me. It’s more on a social level and a design level. [A Flash Flood of Colour] is about trying to get people to step out of their perceived normality and really start thinking about how things could be different.

For instance, say we were given a second Earth. It’s about trying to encourage people to think about how they would design a second Earth. Once most people really stepped outside of the normality and institutions of today—the political systems, religions and stuff like that—they wouldn’t design something we have now, we just kind of fell into it. [The current systems and institutions] are obviously not working. Everywhere you turn there is a crisis—employment crisis, tech crisis, energy crisis—the system doesn’t work. It’s fundamentally flawed. I guess it’s just trying to encourage perspective and empowerment.

 

And it definitely seems like a lot of these crises are happening on a global scale. Is that something you’re looking at—how not only is this world in a bad place, but it’s us as an entire species that need to come together and have a sense of solidarity?
Yeah, we never want to be speaking just about Britain or even Europe. I’ve spoken about other nation states, but I definitely believe there are too many artificial boundaries that we have created, whether it’s nationalities or the forced lines of countries that we have created after hundreds of years of bloodshed and someone draws a line in the sand and says “This is my gang and that’s your gang.” It’s this very primitive reality that we’re still clinging onto.

It’s just trying to get people to realize we’re a very young species. We’ve been on this earth for what, a couple hundred thousand years? We’re just hurtling through space on this rock and I just want people to see the bigger picture and reassess their values.

 

If someone who’s never heard of your band wanted to pick up Flash Flood, what would you want them to know about Enter Shikari?That’s a tough one, but I guess that the music and the lyrics tie in and both have complete disrespect for boundaries and genre-fication and stuff like that. We were lucky enough to be influenced by a whole load of music growing up and I think that is obviously quite evident in our music and our lyrics and outlook. The only rules we set for ourselves is that our music has to be passionate and honest.

Now that you’re back on another touring cycle and you’re just finishing up mainland Europe after doing Tokyo and Australia before you finally head back to the States in April. Now that you guys have gotten bigger, are you finally going to be able to bring over some of the production of your bigger UK shows to the US? What’s the plan for bringing the rage that Enter Shikari’s live show is always known for on this tour cycle?
Wow, that’s true—I guess this is our first proper headlining tour in America in the sense that we’re actually bringing our show with us. We’re definitely going to be bringing some of the production that we use in Europe. It’s going to be our first time to really have our way with the show and make it the full Shikari experience. It’s going to be wicked.

 

As for our performance itself, we try to just approach every show the same whether it’s a place we’ve been 1,000 times or if we’re playing to 10 people. Just give it our all and see what happens.

Well America is definitely looking forward to having you back, especially with letlive. who seem to be just as crazy as you guys in their performance. Should be very intense.
Yeah, and they’re not just a really exciting, visceral live band, but they are really, really nice fellas. I can’t wait to hang out and get to know them even more. We can’t wait either. alt