Help Enter Shikari stay on track for a Number One album

Since its release last Friday, Enter Shikari’s A Kiss For The Whole World has taken an early lead in the UK Album Charts, currently sitting at Number One. If they can continue – beating off competition from Everything But The Girl’s first album in 24 years, and a load of Taylor Swift RSD releases – it will be the band’s first time getting the top gong, having previously peaked at Number Two with 2020’s Nothing Is True And Everything Is Possible.

So, you know what to do: get streaming and get ordering, and help Enter Shikari get their first-ever UK Number One album!

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Last week, Rou Reynolds revealed to Kerrang! that the album came at the end of a creative dry spell brought on by the pandemic.

“Every time I sat down to write, nothing came. It's hard to elucidate just how scary that was,” he told us. “I've written music since I was nine years old. This is something that I do constantly. It's not just catharsis, it's also the way I organise my own thoughts. It's the way I process the world – my world and the world. It's where I get my sense of purpose.

“It's also how I communicate and connect with the world,” he continued. “I'm certainly not an extrovert. I find it hard in a lot of social situations. So music was always a way to connect with people, for me. You strip all of that away, and to suddenly not be able to write was incredibly disconcerting. Disorientating. Extremely odd.”

The road back came when the band headlined the 2021 Download Pilot test event, at which Rou says he felt a renewed connection to music and creativity, and felt the spark again for the first time in ages. The first fruit was the banging (pls) set me on fire.

“That title very clearly says I wanted my soul to be set alight again by creativity, by the thrill of creating something, by the beauty of the connection of live music,” he said. “All these things that had been missing from my life,” he says. “I was just in complete desperation by that point, and so that song really celebrates that desire to create and feel that rush when you make music.”

A Kiss For The Whole World is out now via SO Recordings – get your copy now. They headline Slam Dunk Festival on May 27 – 28.

Standing Like Statues: The authorised biography of Enter Shikari – is out now. Get your copy.