Enter Shikari Toronto February 6th 2018 Review

It is always a treat to get to see your favourite band play live, especially when you live in Canada and your favourite band is from Europe. When you consider the fact that not many European bands do a full Canadian tour, it makes seeing them all the more special. Most bands from Europe hit Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and maybe Winnipeg and Regina (if those last two cities are lucky). Many times they skip over Ottawa, Halifax, Brampton, Charlottetown, Thunderbay, Quebec City, Laval, Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Victoria and many other cities in this beautiful country, which I explained in a different article. When I found out that Enter Shikari wasn't coming to Ottawa, I decided I'd rent a car and drive down to Toronto to see them, because they're my favourite band and I love watching them play. For the first 10 years that I was a fan, I had to satiate my hunger for a live performance by watching grainy low-quality cellphone footage on YouTube or wait a long time for the band to release a live album.

Enough rambling, you're here for my opinion on the show. I hope. So here is my

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

So, they opened the show with a magnificent rendering of The Sights, which they managed to blend perfectly into Solidarity. After that the show was epic. People jumping, dancing, moshing, screaming, singing, yelling and crying. It was Erik's first Shikari show and I had warned him ahead of time that the moshing would get out of hand, but he didn't believe me so he made his way up to the front of the stage and hung out there for the whole Shikari set, and when we met up afterwards he was super sore and very very tired. About 3/4 of the way through the set came the all mighty Quick Fire Round, 4 songs in 8 minutes at 175 bpm, pure insanity, and the place erupted. People were moshing and dancing like nothing I'd seen before, just going wild. The stage divers and crowd surfers were having a ball, some were videoing themselves as they did it, security couldn't keep up at some points. One time there were 2 or 3 people on stage at once!

When Airfield started I had to fight back the tears, it's been a rollercoaster of a year for me since I turned 22, not gonna go into details, just been very stressed out. Anyway, the crowd pulled out their lighters and cell phones to wave in the air during the song, which was a well-needed break from all the insanity before it. Afterwards, Chris quipped that there were a lot of smokers in the crowd, which was very true there is a tonne of smokers in Canada. 

When the band left the stage, the crowd wasn't having it, they chanted and chanted until Rob came out to say thank you, and that he felt like Toronto always made the tour stop feel like home. The band then went into Redshift, which was the first time I'd ever heard it live and man was it a treat.

When the show was finally over the crowd still wanted more, more chanting ensued and after a few minutes we gave up and started making our way out, one of the best nights of my life was over.

The lasers and lights were amazing and added a great atmosphere to the show. One of my favourite moments was during Rabble Rouser when Rou was leaning down the stairs and was making it look like he was climbing the wall like a spider, while he was singing, "Climbing over bodies like spiders". During SYNAW Erik managed to get the mic and got to scream into it, which was awesome! He is the singer of my band so it was cool to see him get that opportunity.

Overall I give the show a 9.5/10 (because I'm biased and don't want to give them a perfect score because favouritism ya know :P)

PHOTOS












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