Post-hardcore band Enter Shikari visit Baldock school
Chris Batten, Rou Reynolds, Rob Rolfe from Enter Shikari - Credit: Archant
A Hertfordshire band who have toured all over the world have spoken to a group of sixth formers about their dislike for mainstream music, councils trying to close down their gigs and playing to “one paying customers”.
Three of the four members of post-hardcore band Enter Shikari visited The Knights Templar School in Baldock last week a decade after starting out in St Albans and have twice had albums peak at number four in the Offical UK Albums Chart.
Vocalist Chris Batten, bassist Rou Reynolds and drummer Rob Rolfe kicked of the meeting by saying “it doesn’t matter if you like us or if you don’t or if you like our music”.
They revealed when they were starting out the band had an old Post Office van, the aptly named The Shikari Ferrari, to ferry them around to gigs and how constantly touring enabled them to build-up a fan base.
Rob said: “We played anyone who would give us a slot, a lot of school shows and we built up a small fan base from there. It wasn’t easy though, I remember we played a show with one paying customer, who was the sound guy’s girlfriend.”
Chris said: “We try and write about things that we believe main stream music isn’t addressing. Pop music talks about two things, it’s either weak love songs spouting out the same old stuff or it’s music that glorifies greed and violence.
“We want to talk about things we believe in through our music.”
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They also revealed their reputation of being a punk band lead to some councils trying to close down their gigs when they were first starting out.
“The council tried to close down one of the events because they think punks are people gathering to cause trouble,” said Rou.
“We had 10 plain clothes policemen at one of the shows trying to find trouble but the only person they ended up arresting was a doorman because he didn’t have the right documents.”
