Enter Shikari - The Zone

Fri 15th Feb, 2008 in Music Reviews

The simplest way to sum up The Zone, the tour companion to Enter Shikari’s debut album, is thus: if you want these musicians to earn more money, you will probably like this release. For it is surely money, as opposed to a justified creative urge to produce and provide more, that motivated the pressing of such a superfluous plastic disk.

Comprised mostly of demo and slightly reworked versions of tracks from the album Take To The Skies, The Zone rehashes this new band’s attempts at carving something fresh from two well established genres. Their self-described “screamo-trance”, whilst being novel and inventive, is ultimately found lacking, sounding a lot like the cheesy Japanese pop that you once jumped along to whilst playing Dance Dance Revolution at Timezone; I half expected an animated bunny with big teeth and cutesy eyes to bounce around my vision during the Routron 5000 remix of Adieu.

Thankfully, there is some worth in it all, especially to Enter Shikari devotees: the B sides, especially Keep It On Ice, where the electronic beats neatly mesh with the admittedly impressive musicianship of the raging ravers, and the vocal delivery of Rou Reynolds obtains some welcome shades of subtlety.