Seeing a band like Enter Shikari in Australia almost feels like welcoming old friends home at this point.
The St. Albans rock band have long maintained a strong relationship with their Australian fanbase, early impact felt as far back as their first Soundwave tour during their Common Dreads era in 2010.
The electricity of the Enter Shikari live experience has only grown and developed with time and the consistent release of material that demonstrated the band’s hunger to push themselves sonically.
Their latest album, 2023’s A Kiss for the Whole World, felt like a joyful act of resistance, the band’s well-honed brand of sonic urgency, meeting a vibrant bed of new electronic, emotive influences that set them up for a thrilling tour cycle to follow.
As 2025 gets underway, Enter Shikari are back in the studio, following new ideas wherever they may lead. Speaking with Rolling Stone AU/NZ ahead of the band’s Australian return for Knotfest, frontman and songwriter Rou Reynolds described any new Enter Shikari project as being very much in its infancy, but the sessions so far have been exciting to be part of.
The juices have been flowing in the sessions taking place in their Worcestershire studio, and they’re enjoying letting threads of musical ideas simply play out.
In the meantime, Enter Shikari are also enjoying brief breaks from writing, hitting the festival circuit early this year. Kicking off 2025 with a whirlwind trip to Japan for Crossfaith’s HYPER PLANET festival in January, the Brits started the engine again for what stands to be another busy year of shows.
Australia, though – we’ve maintained a special spot in their hearts.
“We’re too easy, we love it here!” Chris Batten laughs. The bassist and Reynolds join Rolling Stone AU/NZ under a leafy tree backstage at Knotfest Melbourne, the first stop on their quick run of Australian festival and headline shows.
Along with the East Coast festival dates, Enter Shikari are also hitting two regional venues – Solbar on the Sunshine Coast and Belgrave’s Sooki Lounge. Unsurprisingly, these dates sold out almost immediately – the opportunity to see a Wembley Arena-level band perform in these intimate settings is never one to be passed up.
Image: Chris Batten, Rou Reynolds Credit: Michelle Grace Hunder
“We’ve never been to these places before, it’s really exciting for us,” Batten says.
“It feels like it’s about time,” Reynolds adds. “I’ve been saying for years that I’ve wanted to do a more extensive tour of Australia. I know this isn’t a super extensive run, but we’re starting to get a little out of the space of the major cities. It’s really exciting.”
Once Enter Shikari return to the UK, the creative process for the new album will resume, ahead of a European summer festival run mid-year.
While these recent Enter Shikari sets are still heavily riding off the previous album campaign, both Batten and Reynolds reveal that the energy from their shows are always being taken into the sessions for new music.
“I think, more and more, the live experience informs the writing,” Reynolds insists. “That became very clear during COVID, when I stopped being able to write music because we weren’t playing.
“Since then, I’m more aware of it and just conscious of when it’s happening. We could be walking about a festival and I’m a subconscious sponge; I’m being influenced by little things, even if I don’t know that I am. I’m just more conscious of the whole process, even down to our own sets. There’ll be points in the set that I particularly enjoy and I’ll think, ‘Maybe I need to think about this when I’m writing.’”
For the band, it’s important to remain connected with the types of venues that raised them, particularly in the UK, where the state of live music venues is dire in a similar way to many Australian venues.
Supporting their local live music economies is crucial to keeping their own music communities afloat. As both Reynolds and Batten agree, it is important to keep that fire alive in the smaller venues; it also keeps them grounded even as their own profile grows.
“It’s something we do back home a lot more,” Batten explains. “When we came up playing, we didn’t book gigs in the bigger cities. We learnt our craft by playing these venues, so it’s nice to bring that to other places we don’t normally get the opportunity to play in.”
More information about Knotfest Australia, and Enter Shikari’s sideshows, is available here.
