Enter Shikari – ‘Nothing is True & Everything is Possible’: Album Review

Enter Shikari bring together their best tricks of the trade in an attempt to create their most outlandish, compelling and experimental album to date.

[this is] the one that a fan would pass to their mate like, ‘You don’t know Shikari? This is where you start.
Rou Reynolds, 2019

The Overview

With the genre-less band known to trawl through the paths of dance, electronic, rock and post-hardcore through a space of six studio albums, the band has once provided true experimental story-telling through their latest installment. It seems that a complete listen all the way through is required in order to capture just exactly the band is trying to portray.

With more confidence in song-writing and a willingness to push the boundaries – although the scrappy album cover notes are to be desired – it perfectly emulates sounds from their past as well as their future – giving a well-rounded ambitious display of what Shikari can create.

Is this a new beginning?
Or are we close to the end?
THE GREAT UNKNOWN, Enter Shikari

The Track Listing

Don’t you think it looks better WITHOUT the words?

The song track-list is nothing short of admirable, too. The album starts out with the subtle exchange of piano trills into pulsating synth which feeds beautifully into Reynold’s brilliant voice work directing a strong start to the album with “THE GREAT UNKNOWN.”

Perhaps one of the weaker songs on the album, “Crossing the Rubicon” seems to not really hit any great lengths for me, and would not certainly go amiss on this album. While the bridges convey inspiration, this falls short with a chorus that does not exactly convey the same.

Elusive, edgy and scary, “{ The Dreamer’s Hotel }” imagines the modern world without all the scary stuff that comes with it – and it’s goddamn brilliant.

Eruptions of orchestral triumphs from “Waltzing off the Face of the Earth” and “Elergy for Extinction” are interlaced within intentional messages of struggle and uncertainty in 2020 with contrasts of “modern living …” and “the pressure’s on.”

Even the short reprises and ordinarily “filler” tracks are nothing of the sort, providing wondrous ambient build-up to some of Shikari’s songs that will simply blow the roof off at every one of their UK live music venues they happen to play at next year.

One of those tracks is “T.I.N.A.”

With “T.I.N.A” sounding not too distant to the sound on their debut album, “Take to the Skies” back in 2007, it not only allows the band to stick to their initial roots in sound but ultimately displays the album’s message – a failure of imagination in today’s society, with no alternative to think any differently. With the song being released right in the middle of us dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the message was beautifully apt at the time.

The two-part of “Marionettes” is an ambitious but genius move, which has paid off as one of my favourite segments in the album, a delightful show-and-tell of simply experimenting in the studio with a new synth.

With any chance for Rou to whip out his trumpet, “Satellites * *” shows just how fun and energetic the band can be, and makes you ultimately forget – just for a fleeting moment – the horrendous happenings society is enduring right now. The da-da-da-da’s help, too. When do they not?

Delightfully fun, clever and poignant, Shikari’s Nothing is True & Everything is Possible delivers on-brand points to the constant struggles in modern life, but ultimately embracing love and laughter.

It packs a punch where necessary, has slow moments when needed and is a little experimental gem that may be one of Enter Shikari’s best album to date. There, I said it.