MUSIC: Enter Shikari : Camden Roundhouse - 10/10/09 (Live)

For those of you who may not have been to a gig, it starts off with one or two support bands playing before the main act. Whilst at most gigs, crowds grin and bite their tongue if a support band isn’t to their taste, Enter Shikari fans haven’t got that ability within them apparently. True Tiger were the victim of an onslaught that came from the crowd. Glowsticks were encouraged to be thrown, but as the crowd began jeering and demanding the next support act whilst sticking their fingers up at the band, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for True Tiger – my hat goes off to them for sticking it out and finishing their set, yet this incident left me a bit apprehensive for how the night would turn out.

It turns out I needn’t have worried, the crowd was relatively calm, which was unusual as they should have been going mental! The music is untouchable and Enter Shikari have a fantastic ability to perform perfectly live, however the live presence just didn’t seem to be there. Some would say this is due to their new album ‘Common Dreads’ which seems to be stepping away from the Metalcore of their ‘Take to the Skies’ debut, however the new songs slide in perfectly adjacent with the old songs, especially Zzzonked which was astounding. It’s also unfair to say that the band aren’t trying, they put their all into playing their songs live as they obviously did when writing them, with the band being political in their messages. There just didn’t seem to be anything particularly special about the performance.

I was quite happy later on then to be informed by a fan that this wasn’t one of their best gigs, she in fact put it that this was one of the worst out of the tens of times she has seen them. Maybe they had a bad night in Camden, maybe this could have been due to the fact they’re friends with True Tiger who the crowd had thrown so much abuse at. Hopefully opportunity will rise for me to see Enter Shikari again and see them do as good as I’ve been told they can, I will just have to wait until then.

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