"This is gonna change everything"
Enter Shikari have changed a lot since the last time I paid any attention to them – a whole album and, seemingly, a whole shift in ethos has passed me by. A Flash Flood of Colour is wildly different from your average post-hardcore album; as dubstep-heavy as Korn, as politically-charged as System of a Down. But does it work? Will nintendodubsteptechnocore usurp punk as music’s voice of anarchy?
Well, not exactly. While System… sets an adrenaline-pumping, confrontational tone, it’s entirely undermined by cringeworthy lyrics about “laws and legislations” – yeah, that’s what the kids want alright. Meltdown is the record's statement of intent: a confident assertion - “this is gonna change everything!” - makes way for the first in a series of (at times ill-advised) dubstep breakdowns. It feels fresh, as all good novelties do; sadly, this novelty soon wears off, as soon as the ever so slightly less blunt Sssnakepit, in fact. The majority of Stalemate couldn’t sound more like a Serj Tankian rant if he’d blurted it out himself – the song itself, however, is a welcome breather, even treating us to a piano ballad towards the end. The ominous warning of Search Party feels like nothing but an poorly-concealed bridge between the sedate Stalemate and Arguing With Thermometers, a frankly awful attempt to blend dubstep and metal which makes the rest of the album’s reckless genre mashing look positively subtle.
In the wonderfully-named Ghandi Mate, Ghandi, another aggressively-mumbled diatribe (this time about global warming? I can’t even care any more) is blasted away by another crushing dubstep breakdown, only this time you can’t imagine anyone dancing to it, ever –I don’t think dubstep was ever going to stop us “burning hydrocarbons” anyway. Warm Smiles Do Not Make You Welcome Here starts sedately– politically charged lounge music for album four, boys? Think about it – but inevitably swells back into yet more increasingly-tiresome dubstep. Hello Tyrannosaurus, Meet Tyrannicide is probably the best song on the album, harnessing Rolo Tomassi-style bursts of energy to decent effect, but it feels jaded – as if Shikari have devoted so much energy to the techno side of their music that anything more traditionally them bores them. It’s a shame, but it’s the price a band pays if it wants to be progressive – as Shikari admirably are. The album ends with Constellations – a downbeat Cosmology-esque affair that has potential musically, but any chance of the track being taken seriously is annihilated by singer Rou Reynolds’ Mike Skinner-style stumble through a series of nonsensical ideas. But is that the point that I’ve been missing all along? Am I taking them too seriously? Is this political spiel somehow ironic? I doubt it.
A Flash Flood of Colour undoubtedly has its fanbase, and Shikari fans will greedily lap the band’s latest offering up. It might even be the springboard that takes the band to the next level – indeed, a headline slot on the NME tent at Reading/Leeds could be next in their crosshairs. But the album has its downfalls: the constant ranting feels as informed and sincere as Joey Barton’s twitter account, and the fusion of dubstep and metal isn’t refined enough for a third album. It feels like an album that’s missing its own point – to quote Arguing With Thermometers - ‘you haven’t thought this through, have you boys?’
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