Enter Shikari, Exit Hope

Something strange has happened in my life.

I have always loved music, but have tended to favour artists such as Adele, Florence and the Machine, Il Divo, and perhaps a little Creed. 

Since marrying my husband however, this has changed radically. His metal music has influenced my musical tastes and now I say, without a shadow of a doubt, that my favourite album of all time is 'A Flash Flood of Colour' by the band Enter Shikari.

I LOVE THIS ALBUM!

I love the hard hitting lyrics, the breakdowns, the vocals, the musicianship...everything really. Below is a sample of their lyrics. It is from my fav song of theirs, 'Ghandi Mate, Ghandi'. It contains swearwords (WARNING) but speaks so much truth about the evils of society today.

"Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think the primary purpose of your life, of my life and the entirety of the human race's is just to blindingly consume to support a failing economy and a faulty system. Forever and ever until we run out of every resource and have to resort to blowing each other up to ensure our own survival. I don't think we're supposed to sit by either while we continue to use a long outdated system that produces war, poverty, collusion, corruption, ruins our environment and threatens every aspect of our health and does nothing but divide and segregate us. I don't think how much military equipment we are selling to other countries, how many hydrocarbons we're burning, how much money is being printed and exchanged, is a good measure of how healthy our society is but I do think I can speak for everyone when I say, we're sick of this shit."

Time to mobilize
Time to open eyes.
We are not a quiet pocket of resistance
This is real, but we cannot afford to fail
Act with, act with persistence
This is real, but we cannot afford to fail
Army, establish order
Respect me and fear me
Fuck you! We have no respect
And when tomorrow comes
We're gonna step on your head
Woah, woah
Calm down, (calm down mate), calm the fuck down
Gandhi mate, remember Gandhi 
Alright, alright I'm fine

See if we keep them silent then they'll resort to violence
And that's how we criminalize change

Awww, yabba dabba do one, son
We don't want your rules
Who you fooling son, we've got all the tools
We need to build a whole new system
To correct these flaws

(You know what?)
I've already listed them
You're a communist
You're a fucking utopianist
Ah here come, the immersive labels
For their attempt, it fails

Cause man, we're so far out your comfort zone

We stop, think, begin to revive
We stop, think, begin to revive
We stop, we think, we begin to revive
We begin to revive

Put the call out to the frontline
Get the message out to the contact squad
Transmit emergency frequencies
Put the call out to the frontline
Get the message out to the contact squad
Put the call out, put the call out, put-the-call-ohhhhh

Oh and the jigsaw starts to build
Oh and the jigsaw starts to build

Piece by piece

Open their minds
Transmit emergency frequencies
Open their minds

Transmit emergency frequencies
Emergency frequencies
Emergency frequencies
Emergency frequencies
Emergency frequencies

While I love this song, and all their songs, I find that they leave something lacking. They speak of what is wrong, but they never offer any solutions. 

I have written the following as a poetic response to Enter Shikari. Remember, even though I seem to slam them, I really love this band and what they offer. I just think they stop short...

Enter Shikari, Exit Hope

Now I don't know about you,

But it seems the primary purpose of your life,

Is to spout anger and vitriol towards society

Without ever asking

What is the alternative to reality?

Your lyrics offer nothing

Except a prolonged mastication of verbal diarrhoea

That spurts forth with no direction

Covering everything and adding to the problem.

I don't think that we are suppose to sit

And blindly absorb the anger of someone else

Without asking the question that you never verbalise

Of "yeah, but what the hell do we do about it?"

When noise on airwaves

Takes up precious minutes of my day

I don't think we are meant to hear our own voices echoed at us

But rather an alternative solution

Yet what can you offer?

You see the problems and have no answer

Except to rant at the machine 

Created to serve us, which we now serve

Which holds you in servitude too

With no Saviour to help you.

By rejecting everything

You have rejected EVERYTHING

And by doing so ensured your slavery forever

Without any hope for relief.

Anger is your cry

Yet it is hollow and empty without any grounding.

You have sold out by raging against the sell outs

You have become a label that has nothing to sell

Other than pointless words of fury

Against the very people who buy your albums

Putting food on your tables.

So what is your answer?

What do you have to say to that?

Your assessment of society is sound, yet flawed

Due to the fact that you are flawed

And none of you see the truth.

For you missed it while staring at the faces around you

Missed the one who died to save them

Who raged against it all until death

And offered his own life to put it at an end.

You offer no Saviour

You offer nothing but empty sound bites.

He offers eternity, he offers life.

Enter Jesus, humanity learns to cope.

Enter Shikari, exit hope.