Enter Shikari - Live at Alexandra Palace Play It Again Sam | Release Date : 18th November 2016
“ Greetings carbon based life forms ” hollas an excited Rou Reynolds , who alongside his fellow three bandmates , is looking out on 10,000 people .
If you weren ’ t one of the lucky ones to be there that night , you missed out on a spectacle . It was a show packed with incredible graphics , stunning lighting , and was performed in quadrophonic sound . So how do you translate that into a live album ? Pretty easily apparently . The carnage causing ‘ Slipshod ’/’ The Jester ’ remix still sounds huge and ‘ Radiate ’ goes to a whole new level of beautiful madness . ‘ Dear Future Historians ’ is tearinducing as Rou ’ s emotion translates through the record , and fan-favourites such as ‘ Gandhi , Mate Gandhi ’, ‘ Mothership ’ and the monumental closer of ‘ The Appeal and the Mindsweep II ’ simply slay . By the end , it ’ s not just Alexandra Palace that has been torn in two , it ’ s you at home as well . It leaves you with goosebumps allowing you to imagine just how it would have felt to be there .
Through the spoken word interludes , the remixes , the cheers of a unified crowd and every chord and melody performed , you can feel passion , power and a complete loss of inhibition . That visceral happiness is what Enter Shikari are all about and ‘ Live at Alexandra Palace ’ illustrates that perfectly .
Exist Immortal - Breathe Primordial Records | Release Date : 28th October 2016
It would be really easy to pen Exist Immortal into the bracket of “ djent ” but there ’ s a whole lot more to their sound than spazzy riffing , drop tuning and smashing the open notes . Breathe boasts intelligent song writing , utilising the more coherent aspects of the djent genre as a vessel to compose truly magnificent , end to end songs .
The standout moment of the record comes in the form of frontman Meyrick De La Fuente ’ s vocal performance on lead single Follow Alone . This really is one you ’ ll have stuck in your head for days and days . The guitars are rather Periphery , whereas the vocals take more of a gargantuan Dan Tompkins vibe , but the vocal hook on the chorus will really get you . As with any groovy tech epic there ’ s a killer solo to put a nerdy music gurn on your face .
After being taken on a journey through the different approaches to tech metal , it ’ s left us feeling like Breathe is the perfect introduction album for people who haven ’ t dipped their toes into the genre before .
Easy to listen to in one sitting , Breathe never has a dull moment and pacifies out need for catchy vocal hooks and techy riffage .
Words by Kris Aarre
Words by Alice Hoddinott
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