As far as guttural raw energy goes, Arguing With Thermometers is Enter Shikari at their most playfully frenetic. While Stalemate and Meltdown make a better case for the incredible quality and consistency of new album A Flash Flood Of Colour, Arguing With Thermometers sees the band cramming an insane amount of genres into a single track. The result? All their trademark bombast, but slapped onto a streamlined radio chorus that's seen them welcomed into the fold of primetime airplay.
The track keeps hitting, boxer-style - the chemical toxicity of the bass chugging out under the raps and cocked eyebrow drug-referencing lines like: 'I ain't talking about class Aaaaaaa's!' It's loose abandon and lads-hitting-the-town good-times, Enter Shikari style. And that of course, entails a bloody wild ride.
Last week, there was a general buzz in the air at how the Maccabees very nearly nabbed the No. 1 spot in the album charts - initial mid-week reports laid the groundwork for a guitar band beating off the likes of big pop artists like Adele and Bruno Mars (albeit in the notoriously poorly-selling January weeks).
And while the Maccabees ultimately ended up at a still very respectable No. 4, the situation looks set to repeat itself this week - but in this instance with Enter Shikari taking up the gauntlet.
For the dance-metal melding rock act, it'd be a major coup, but a thoroughly deserving one. A Flash Flood Of Colour is, in short, brilliant - particular highlights include the politically engaged Stalemate and the almost Streets-esque Constellations: all rhymed spoken word tales of being lost in an uncompromising world. Disaster vs. sustainability - the band leave it up for the listener to implement the ambition and drive for success on their own life.
Many albums can attain to sound 'of the time', but it is A Flash Flood Of Colour that truly engages with what our time is about. Cutting through headlines with an almost childlike singularity of mind, the album sees the crystallisation of a band at the peak of their powers - to see the record go No. 1 would be a bite back at arguably anti-Metal institutions like the BRIT / Mercury awards.
And that's not to say what the BRIT and Mercury awards do is wrong - personally I love keeping up to date with them and think they bring a vital sales boost to the industry - but there are certainly specific genres they overtly shy around, in the process ignoring many great albums. Enter Shikari nabbing that No. 1 would be only right for a band that have stuck in there when so many others have folded after disappointing sales of their sophomore effort.
What makes A Flash Flood Of Colour so brilliant though? It's there in the way it folds together stadium-sized hooks with the forefront of the dub-step-metal movement brought so wonderfully to the fore by Korn's Path of Totality last year. Oh, and the album is so definitively British - it could have only been here, made in England, that a band would have the bombacity and innate sense of quirk to title a single Gandhi Mate, Gandhi.
It's here that - alongside Constellations and Stalemate - that the record hits its peak. Passing through its various movements, from manifesto-like spoken-word intro to thumping acidic synth meltdown, from hardcore riff-slamming to the way Rou Reynolds reels off a wild cry of 'yabbadabbadoo' as if its place in a contemporary song is the stuff of everyday occurrence. It's electicism at its very best, concentrated down into one of the best rock LP's of the past twelve months.
You know Enter Shikari, the metal band that blended dangerously loud guitars with bonkers trance synths in a recipe for guaranteed mayhem. Tales of their gigs and the apocalyptic scenes that unfolded at them was the stuff of legend and in something of a rarity for metal bands these days, their records charted respectably too.
As such, it was surely only a matter of time before they got on the dubstep scene, and with a load of dirty raps thrown in for good measure, Sssnakepit is every bit as grimy as its venom-infested name suggests.
The first single from new album A Flash Of Colour, the single feels confident, assured in its ample playing to both crowds - whether you're a dance-head or rocker, the track is primed to push your buttons. Something that the band have proved time and time again they're very good at. Mosh-pits around the country, get ready...
