St. Albans metalcore/electronica outfit Enter Shikari want
to be fun party animals and political activists, but don’t how to be both at the
same time. It’s a precarious balancing act that only the most skilled songwriters can pull
off.
I was never a huge fan of this band in the early days, despite being a teenager from Hertfordshire at the time their debut dropped. I found
their music gimmicky and the death growls scared me.
In the eight years since then, Enter Shikari have cut down
on the amount of breakdowns per track and gained an ear for progression, just
as I’ve become less afraid of metal, now frequently indulging in the most
guttural, brutal variations of the genre available.
I thought maybe that my newfound openness to heaviness and
their newfound rejection of gimmicks might cause me to like this album. Having
listened to it, I can definitely see that the band’s creativity and musical prowess has
improved. However, The Mindsweep doesn’t
feel nearly as fun as their early stuff. The one thing they had going for them
then is the one thing they’re lacking now.
A lot of it’s down to the way they convey their political
messages on this album. Whilst there are clearly some interesting topics here such
as the privatisation of the NHS and classism, the band choose to discuss these
issues by spewing a thesaurus at the listener, using as many long words as
possible where short ones would do. It’s the Russell Brand approach of trying
to sound overly intelligent in order to make up for immaturity.
The best tracks on this album work when the band embrace
their inner childishness and drop the fancy vocabulary. ‘There’s a Price on
Your Head’ sees the band laying manic vocals over wild and crazy System-of-a-Down-like guitars. An airhorn is even thrown into the mix for good measure. It’s
comically and brilliantly over the top.
Humour is the perfect counterweight for preachiness. Saying
this, seriousness can work in music too and Enter Shikari also prove this on
the following track ‘Dear Future Historians’. The complete opposite of ‘There’s
a Price on Your Head’, this song does away with the mosh-friendly
instrumentation entirely in exchange for some intimate ballady piano. The long
words are also ditched here. The result is a track that’s genuinely and
enjoyably sincere. Well, at least for the most part.
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| ‘I never swam with dolphins’ – Enter Shikari :( |
The fact that these two tracks don't come across as wholly cringeworthy proves that this band
can balance politics and party atmosphere and it’s therefore annoying that the
remaining tracks exist in the form that they do. As stated many times already,
it’s mostly the pretentious language that holds a lot of this album back. The
band's focus seems to be on educating rather than entertaining. I guess for
some people the preachiness is the pull factor. Alas, however, it is not my cup of tea.
★★☆☆☆
TRACK TASTER: