Enter Shikari - A song to change the world

Exuberant, multifaceted and politically engaged, Enter Shikari keep riding the wave that carried them from the most underground clubs (back in the days of the alternative anthem "Sorry, You're Not A Winner", 2007) to major international stages. Their most recent album, "The Spark", cemented their status with the mainstream audience, finally freeing them from the crossover/nu-metal pigeonhole, and established them as a headline name on the bills of some of Europe's biggest festivals, with their songs now in heavy rotation on the playlists of the most highly rated rock radio stations, including here in Italy.

Ahead of their upcoming headline show at Rock Im Ring in Bolzano (July 13th), we met Rou Reynolds, leader and frontman of a band that has proven over time its ability to blend post-hardcore and electronics in a highly personal way. We focused in particular on the band's relationship with Italy, chatted amiably about science and politics, two subjects they've always cared deeply about, but also about the power that music can still be said to have today to influence the dynamics of the present. Can a song still try to change the world?

You played in Milan recently, and the crowd was wilder than ever. But — as you admitted yourselves on stage — you initially struggled a bit to win over audiences in our country. Why do you think it took so long to win over Italian fans?

I think it's because we haven't played in Italy as many times as we have in other European countries, so the blame lies entirely with us!

But after that Milan show, we really can't wait to come back: there was an electrifying atmosphere, unlike anything we'd experienced in Italy before.

During the show you played an acoustic version of "Take My Country Back", which was originally a fast, powerful song. Would you agree that this more intimate version gives the song a different atmosphere? Perhaps it even offers a different way of interpreting the message of the lyrics…

"Take My Country Back" is a song written several years ago now, born out of a feeling of disbelief and frustration at the resurgence of nationalism in Europe, a truly terrible phenomenon. At the time, writing a fast, angry song to tackle a subject like that was probably the best solution, the most fitting one, because it reflected my state of shock at the issue. Now that a few years have passed, I notice things are actually getting worse, so it felt appropriate to transform it, to play a darker, more reflective version. The power of the crowd singing along together, carried only by the guitar, is something both electrifying and encouraging: I like focusing on the sense of strength that comes from everyone truly being united.

Is an Enter Shikari festival set different from one of your regular shows? What can we expect from your performance at the upcoming Rock Im Ring in Bolzano?

I love playing in open-air spaces: festivals are basically my life! So our shows on these occasions often end up a bit wilder or more amped up than usual. I'd say the one real difference we find is that festival crowds are definitely more varied.

There will be plenty of people who couldn't care less about us, because not everyone in the crowd will be an Enter Shikari fan, and that sometimes pushes us to go even wilder to win them over and try to turn them into fans. It's always a great gamble. A great challenge. We love it.

Tell us the strangest idea you've ever come up with that you haven't managed to pull off yet…

Ha! Great question! But bear in mind you're talking to a band that once decided to shoot a video on a rickety little boat in the middle of the English Channel, in the dead of winter. You're talking to a band that did an entire tour in quadraphonic sound. Look, even our strangest ideas, we almost always end up pulling off in the end.

You sing with a strong English accent, even in the studio, while a lot of English bands try to mask theirs, maybe to sound less "foreign" to American ears. Is that something you do on purpose? Do you think it's important, or is it just something that comes naturally to you?

Honestly, it's never crossed my mind, not even for a second, not to sing in my natural accent. You know, I'm not an actor, I'm a musician, and our music is built on emotion and sincerity. I'm not interested in trying to please anyone: I'm interested in making art in a direct, honest way.

Let's talk about Brexit: what kind of impact do you think it could have on the music industry and the live business?

It's hard to make solid predictions right now about the consequences for the music industry, because at the moment it's still pretty unclear what's going to happen overall. But I'm fairly certain that the free movement of European culture from the UK to the rest of Europe and vice versa is going to become much more complicated. The problems will be even bigger for smaller acts in particular. For example, it's going to be much harder and more expensive to tour across the whole of Europe.

Your music has always been deeply inspired by scientific themes. Nowadays a lot of people try to tear down and discredit science. What do you think can be done to counter this trend?

It's a tricky question, because everyone has their own personal reasons for not valuing science, reasons that might be political or religious in nature, for instance. What I will say is that no civilization has ever collapsed as a result of becoming too rational or too scientific. Science is the only tool we have for understanding the universe and all the phenomena we can't fully grasp or interpret.

Can culture in general, and music in your particular case, still change the world today?

It's statistically proven that, starting with the invention of the printing press, which made possible the large-scale spread of books and literature, the world has seen a considerable decline in episodes of violence. The linguist Steven Pinker has written extensively about this phenomenon: he argues it's down to the fact that through reading we absorb new perspectives on the world. That, in turn, increases our empathy, fuelling a sense of connection with other people and making us less prone to violence as a result.

So the great dream of the Sixties isn't a utopia after all!

I think music has by now overtaken literature in terms of how many people engage with it, consume it on a daily basis. Music is an incredibly rich tool for emotion: you can express all the depth you want in a very concise way, so music can be just as powerful as literature when it comes to spreading empathy.

Are states really "just lines drawn in the sand with a stick"? (a line from the song "Meltdown", from the band's third album "A Flash Flood Of Colour")

Yes, states are man-made and constantly shifting. Just look at a 17th-century map: nations, flags, civilizations, everything eventually disappears, because they're nothing more than the result of an idea, the product of collective imagination. If you look at the Earth from space, you don't see nations, just land and sea. If you think about it, you'll realize that all the big problems our species has to face are global problems: climate change, disease, resource depletion, the nuclear threat, artificial intelligence, and so on. All issues that need to be tackled and solved together. Hiding behind the fiction of borders and building walls does nobody any good. Ever.

What do you think has been the best and the worst contribution that social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have made to contemporary society?

Staying up to date and in touch with friends all over the world is a fantastic thing, but there's a flip side. Often our social media feeds are a collection of other people's best and most beautiful moments, because in the end those are the moments each of us tends to want to show the world.

The negative effects can be devastating…

Yes, all of this can have negative effects on us, because we end up comparing our own life to the filtered highlight reel of other people's lives. The consequence is that we're automatically led to think our life is less exciting, enjoyable or worth living than those of our friends and acquaintances. It's one of the factors that most contributes to the rise in anxiety and depression affecting our generation.

Ride the wave of great music

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