Since forming in 2003 at school in their hometown of St Albans, UK, Enter Shikari have, thus far, released seven full-length studio albums; TAKE TO THE SKIES (2007), COMMON DREADS (2009), A FLASH FLOOD OF COLOUR (2012), THE MINDSWEEP (2015), THE SPARK (2017). NOTHING IS TRUE & EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE (2020), and A KISS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. All seven albums debuted in the UK Album Chart top 5 “midweeks”, with 2023’s A Kiss For The Whole World finally scoring the band their first ever UK Official Album Chart #1 record.  Summer 2025 saw the release of the band’s WEMBLEY. LONDON. 17th FEBRUARY 2024, a 2LP / Digital album recorded live the band’s show at Wembley Arena on their A Kiss For The Whole World UK arena tour.  Enter Shikari have been recipients of multiple awards and topped many a magazine reader’s poll, picking up “Best Live Band’ gongs like there’s no tomorrow, as well as a plethora of ‘Best UK Artist’ and ‘Best Album’ statuettes, from the likes of Kerrang!, Rock Sound, the Heavy Music Awards and NME. Summer 2020 saw the band announce a partnership / shirt sponsorship with local football team St Albans City FC. Frontman / songwriter / producer Rou Reynolds has published four books with Faber Music, the most recent (and most ambitious) being a ‘A Treatise On Possibility’ in the summer of 2021. As well as the Rou Reynolds authored publications, in October 2022 Faber Music also published ‘Standing Like Statues - The Enter Shikari Biography’ written by Kerrang! Magazine editor Luke Morton. Enter Shikari have played somewhere in the region of 3000 live shows around the globe, including three headline arena-sized tours in the UK, substantial UK / Europe arena supports in their early career with The Prodigy, Linkin Park and 30 Seconds To Mars, and more big and small festivals worldwide than it would be possible to list fully in the space available in this document. In May 2023, Enter Shikari headlined the UK’s Slam Dunk Festival in Hertfordshire and Leeds, before announcing a UK arena tour for February 2024. The subsequent tour included the band’s first ever show at Wembley Arena and, in recognition of the grassroots touring scene which birthed them, the band pledged £1 from every ticket sale for the tour to be donated to the Music Venue Trust to support grassroots music venues in the UK, making them the first artist to do so, and leading the way for artists such as Coldplay to follow in their footsteps. Summer 2025 saw Enter Shikari playing their biggest ever German headline show to date, an outdoor headline performance at Cologne’s Suderbruck venue, after which the band returned briefly to California to take part in the Van’s Warped Tour Long Beach festival, before finishing festival season in Europe with main stage sets at Reading / Leeds Festival.  Enter Shikari ended 2025 with a run of European dates taking in some of the less-visited-on-usual-Shikari-tours countries, culminating in the band’s first headline shows in Spain for several years. The band also performed their only headline UK show of 2025, a relatively intimate tour warm-up show at Watford’s 3000 capacity Colosseum. Immediately following the tour, the band returned to the studio to continue work on the  You’ll already be aware of the fact that we are currently in the early stages of 2026. Let’s see what this year brings…. 

As the smoke clears from the pandemic's boom of kids learning about hardcore music and culture through social media, bands who have spent the greater part of the last 15 years planting their flag firmly in concrete as mainstays of the scene like Have Heart or Ceremony have come back to play shows bigger than ever, selling thousands of tickets in places like Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia and New York City. A band you will notice billed as support at a lot of these shows are Southern California's Initiate - Crystal Pak(vocals), Michael Morales(bass) and Draven Carter(drums). While some of these bands, part of the new wave of hardcore happening, struggle to find their footing in this strange new landscape of people moshing in their bedrooms, it’s obvious to anyone paying attention - Initiate stand-out. With their start in 2016, Initiate's music draws from the melody of bands like Turning Point and the aggression of bands like Uniform Choice. Their latest studio album(named in Brooklyn Vegan’s Top 55 Albums of 2023), Cerebral Circus, recorded with producer Zach Tuch, combines elements of the genre in a way that feels fresh. The same can be said with their newest single, Too Much. The guitars are dynamic, while the drums and bass provide a grounded base, respecting the foundational sounds of their predecessors.  “Too Much touches the dark and the light,” Pak explains. “How the constant exposure to death makes me feel like living to see the next day is incredibly bleak, but when you do find the light in that dark place, it permeates through.” Pak’s intense and thoughtful performance stands above the noise, conveying a message of importance for anyone searching for something to connect with, proving to the listener that there are in fact bands out there that truly do give a shit.  While style in any subculture is paramount - hardcore is special. Bands like Youth Of Today showed up in letterman jackets and brought things like college crewneck sweaters into the fashion conversation. Hardcore made it palpable for its listeners to wear Levi’s 501’s and buttoned up collared shirts while front flipping into a crowd or screaming words of discontent. It let everyone know everywhere that while The Sex Pistols were great, you could still create your own version of defiance. Initiate embodies the above ethos. If you look up the average Initiate listener picture in Webster's dictionary, you might have a hard time figuring out if the picture is in fact a student at Stanford University or someone screaming lyrics about the duality of man - but that's kind of the point.