A brief chat with Enter Shikari

Yellow Scene: Have you been to Colorado before?

Rob Rolfe: I love Denver. I have many great memories of Denver. One of my favorites – I can’t remember how long ago it was, but we were touring in a little van and I was driving. We were on our way to Denver, and we were coming through this incredible mountainous landscape that seemed to be just on the edge of a huge drop to the right. There was a gorgeous little river. I can’t remember the exact road but it was a gorgeous little drive. I remember that, and then I remember the actual city itself – it seemed like a really cool place to be with a really nice vibe. Lots of cool cafes and stuff. I always enjoy my time there. I always think every time I go there that it would be one place out of the US that I would enjoy going for a holiday.

YS: The band is about ten years old now – how do you think it’s grown?

RR: Actually, we’re 12 years old this year. It’s incredible to think of where we were when we first started. When we first met each other, we were just little kids playing together, doing Beatles covers and so on, just for our school fetes or parties. To think how far it’s come is quite ridiculous. We’ve got so much to be thankful for, and we’re so grateful for every opportunity that we’re given, from every tour to every show, to every time that we release something new – the fact that we’ve been able to continue as a band for 12 years now, carry on releasing music and have it as a career is absolutely brilliant and we’ve only got our fans to thank for it.

YS: You’re headlining the second stage at Donington this year too…

RR: Yeah, it’s gonna be wicked. We played the same slot two years ago, but Iron Maiden were playing on the main stage and it was in their contract that no one else could play on the entire festival while they were playing. That meant that our headline slot was put on slightly earlier than your average headline slot. We spent pretty much our entire fee on this huge lightning rig, and then it was still broad daylight when we went on stage. I don’t want to say it was a waste because they still looked fantastic, but we maybe didn’t get the best out of them. This year, we’ve been promised that we’re going on in the dark. Think we’re going on about the same time as Kiss, which I’m alright with because I don’t think there’s too many crossover fans.

YS: What can we expect from the Denver show?

RR: We’ve obviously just released the new album, so we have a lot of new material from that. It feels so fresh, like we injected a bunch of adrenalin into our set. At the same time, we understand that our fans want to hear the old stuff as well so we keep it a mix. We’ll go out there with the same passion we always do, and just enjoy ourselves. That’s what it’s all about.

YS: When the tour’s done, what do you have planned for the rest of the year?

RR: There’s plenty of touring. When we come back from the States, we head off to Australia for a few shows. Over the summers, we’ve got tons of European festivals. We’ve got a couple of headliners in Russia – just basically more and more touring until after the summer when we’ll continue doing headliners in different parts of the world. We’ll certainly be busy for the next 18 months or so.