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Metal and electronic music have always been something of a rough partnership, often not 'metal' enough for the metal heads and too 'rock' for the race/trance kids. Some bands manage to acheive a spectacular balance of both elements, such as the apocalyptic cruch of Godflesh, the cold industrial metal of early Fear Factory, and more recently the newer albums from Dark Tranquillity and Mors Principum Est. Another notable mentoin woud be Horse the Band. Yet, on the flip side, there has been the vomit inducing nu-metal combinations of rap-metal, hip hop and dance music such as Disturbed and Static X. I would say this album is part of the later

So along come Enter Shakari comnbining whiny-emo and electornic music. What we have the worst parts of 80s new wave, trance keyboards that your NES games sounded better then, some annoyingly nasal singing, some even more annoyingly pathetic emo yelping (not screaming, yelping), our old friend Mr. "boring one chord breakdown that every hardcore band uses" all bundled up into one nice, simple and musically uninteresting package. Guitar-wise, they have not one shred of originality and each and every riff or chord progression sounds identical to what the emo/screamo bands were doing in the early 2000s. The keyboards sound very cheap and tacky, kinda like the worst Euro dance you can think of, and strike me as a gimmick rather then adding anything to the music. But the worst part of this has to be the front man. His so called 'screams' are awful. He is really struggling, sounding like a small child with a throat infection, and it makes the band sound comical. His clean vocals aren't much better, very bland in the kinda of bad British Incubus style that was very popular in the mid-ninties.

This sounds like an 80s videogame sound track with some guitars and bad emo vocals over the top. Don't beleive the hype

Rating: 1 out of 5

When Frankenstein wnet grave-robbing and slammed all of his corpses together in an unholy abination, we all thought - 'Wow, that really should never of happened...'
And we were right. It shouldn't. As it turned out, Frankenstien's Monster ripped open many of Frankenstein's family members. So fusion isn't always a good thing.
But with Enter Shikari (Shikari meaning 'hunter' in Japanese) fusion is a good thing. A very good thing, indeed. It should never work; on paper, it sounds... wrong. Rave, dance, metal, hardcore, rock. All slammed together in one genre. This amalgamation seems... unnatural. But it works. And so very well.
The interludes can get a little annoying if your iPod or MP3 is on shuffle; they lull you into a false sense of securtiy - you expect the song to come up that it eases you into, and then plays some God-awful Phil Collins. Not pretty. Aside from that, their is no fault in the album.
Every track is immense in its own way, from the unashamedly brash opening lyric of the album (when you hear it, you'll know what I mean) to the dying, album-wide refrain at the end, Take to the Skies is something that cannot be debated in its splendour.
Even the less raucous tracks (I.e; Today Won't Go Down in History and Adieu) have a spell-binding edge that speaks serenity and musical mastery. Mothership, Enter Shikari and Labyrinth stand out to me, purely for the raw energy and panache they convey. Keyboards are utilized well, as are synths, beats and a mix of harmonic and violent vocals.
Unfortunately, the God-of-all-musical knowledge that is NME magazine have referred to the most acknowleged single of the album Johnny Sniper (a by-word for condom, no less) as 'the worst song ever released by any band, ever'. This, oddly, is true, and yet because of that, that song has an ironic, unbeatable edge that is both cathcy and enigmatic.
Enter Shikari began as a Myspace hopeful, and as their talent permeated the walls of cyberspace, so we all came to know them. This album - despite some unlucky choices of interlude songs - is consistent, edgy, and a veritable recreation of Frankenstein's monster... albeit it doesn't go around ripping children limb from limb.

It get's you to do that.

Rating: 5 out of 5