Take to the Skies

I'M SCREAMING. now i'm whispering. SCREAM whisper. -all this for 53 minutes

Enter Shikari combines metalcore with trance. When I first listened to them live at the Eurosonic Festival in 2007, I was impressed. Now I think it sounds a bit dated and the synth/dance is too rare to make it differentiate from other post-hardcore albums.

Love this! The energy is amazing, and the variations between screaming and singing are just right.

Rating: 8/10 Best songs: Mothership, No sssweat, Return to energiser, Sorry you are not a winner, Ok time for plan b

Some good metal 4 3

Absolutely terrible. For incels and thirteen year old boys only.

Best live gig I ever saw was enter Shikari opening for jay z and linkin park. Absolutely phenomenal. I love synthy screamy rock, and I love this.

As this album started I wasn’t sure I was up for the screaming… and wasn’t sure I could listen to this… and I was all ready to dislike this. But it grew and grew on me and parts of this kept drawing me in. Jonny Sniper seemed particularly good, then the unexpectedly nice Adieu followed and I realized I was enjoying the album. Good stuff!

I seen these guys back in 2005 at a tiny gig at the viewfield hotel in Arbroath, was one of my favourite gigs at that venue, it absolutely kicked off. Loved their demos and didn’t mind this album but kinda lost interest in the band and the music shortly after. I don’t think this album holds up well today, But thank you to who ever added this for a nice personal trip up memory lane. 4 stars for the 2005 gig.

On the opening song I was enjoying the music but I never would have expected those vocals the first time I heard them. The album is pretty good, I enjoyed it. I think a couple of the songs I’d really like.

Crazy ambitious album! Exploring this many genres without losing overall connectivity is impressive. It definitely grew on me, and around 'Sorry You’re Not A Winner' I was all in.

Post-hardcore, trance, metalcore, electronicore. Ni fu ni fa.

Love post hardcore, and it's probably the newest genre I've gotten into. I enjoyed being exposed to this! Would revisit.

Modern alternative pop punk hangover with some cool synths

Pretty Good, didn't blow my mind though

Love the album art. I really want to love the album. But it sounds dated and, I hate to say it, predictable, which maybe is too harsh for such genre spanning work. There are elements which are great, like the synth element scrabbling around in the background, a nice contrast to the heavier guitar work. But overall it just didn't win me over.

Who knew all it took for me to hate screamo more was an English accent. Generally I didnt hate this (well I hated the more metalcore parts some) but eh. Wierd tonal shifts throughout that didn't really feel coherent.

Great energy, but just not my thing.

A great era, even if wasn't a huge fan of this band.

Not bad for this style, but I feel like there’s a lot of essential albums that should be included first. I guess I’m not the right person to make the criticism though!

What a throwback. I haven’t properly listened to Enter Shikari in a long time but they’re a lot of fun - combining trance with metalcore to make this really unique and hyperactive brand of electronic heaviness that takes essentially the same approach as nu-metal but is stylistically very distinct. It has the scrappy energy of a debut by a group of guys in their late teens and early 20s and naturally doesn’t have the focus and cohesion of later and more mature albums like A Flash Flood of Colour, but what it lacks in polish it makes up for in promise It’s also a rare rear-heavy album - while songs like Mothership and No sssweat shine brightly on the first half, Sorry You’re Not a Winner is in a league of its own as it veers from breakdowns to breakbeats with its uniquely danceable aggression. And just when it seems like the album has peaked, Adieu comes out of nowhere, a genuinely beautiful and anthemic track that somehow doesn’t feel out of place and shows the breadth of what these guys are capable of It’s probably not their best album, and some bits have aged badly. Rou’s screams are a bit choppy in places and some of the tracks in the first half rely on a lot of the same tricks to diminishing returns. But when it works, it really really works

Better than I'll admit. When I was like 5, I have weird memories of kind of haunting harmonies in my sleep. I never knew where it came from. This album replicated that sound. Crazy. There's a bit of Welch post hardcore sound here, some grating, some enjoyable.

Not really into Enter Shikari, but I can see how some are. There's a lot of energy and some great sounds. The cross in genres is not new here, I do think that others have done slightly better even though they did traverse the genres differently, but this isn't a bad album.

Some shouting made way for some nice melodies. Reminded me of Hundred Reasons.

The balance and use of "quiet v screaming" here is not great, but i have less of a problem with that versus that the songs seems to be uninteresting or awkward. Most of the first half seemed to be just dumb, while the back half tried harder, but just came across as forced and amateurish. Definitely not needed on this list.

No thanks. 2 stars.

Never quite understood this subgenre of metal, the technical breakdowns and screaming butting up against extended melodic sections and deeply passionate lyricism. Kind of feels like water and oil to me, the LP not really gelling into any kind of cohesive artistic product or statement in the course of its runtime

An alright hardcore emo rock album. It started out pretty strong and aggressive with the screaming but as it went on it mixed in normal vocals to where it was tolerable. If they stuck with the style in the latter half this would’ve been an ok album but it was not something I’d come back to. 4.4/10

Suck my balls

This was a bit of a struggle. 2/5.

so emo... sucks...

At the turn of the millennium, post-hardcore had seen a shift into the likes of emo stylings that would keep things fresh. Further, more progressive approaches to post-hardcore songwriting would come to define a new sound for the genre. Pieces of each culminate in the final ingredient of post-y2k post-hardcore: electronica. Enter Enter Shikari (lol), who helped to pioneer the relatively niche subgenre of electronicore by employing a liberal use of trance synthesizers in their other metalcore-style of post-hardcore. The result is inventive-yet-underwhelming. Lacks a lot of hard-hitting moments that would otherwise define a post-hc record. The only instance that comes to mind is the into to Sorry You're Not A Winner, which loses steam by the time it gets to the chorus. I will say the last three three tracks do a nice fake-out with the Adieu sounding like it would close the album before doing the ACTUAL final songs. Haha nice. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: Electronicore is a bit too niche to deserve a spot on the list but if it were 2002 albums? Sure why not.

I absolutely hated this. Just absolutely not my thing. Annoying overall. Fortunately it got a bit better near the latter half of the album but I hope to never hear this again. My personal rating: 1/5 My rating relative to the list: 1.5/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

So, I've concluded that I really can't deal with the screaming. But when you set that aside and just listen to the music, there's not really much substance to found here at all.

Quiet loud metal core with synths. Sorry I just find it unlistenable.

Kinda reminded me of that Ministry album from the main list, where the production was way more sample-loopy than I would have expected. Problem is I liked the Industrial Metal fusion going on in Psalm 69, but I sure as hell don't like screamo.

One of the inventors of nu-rave - possibly the least important and least influential genre in popular music. Like someone playing a guitar near a terrible rave, but somehow (sometimes) less fun than that sounds. I'm also socking a star for being an influence on the dubstep dreck that followed - and this wasn't going to score highly before that!

I understand the appeal, but this type of dubsteppy metalcore makes me enter a primal state of fight or flight.

Oh this is exhausting. I did a photoshoot with these guys a few years back (I project the lines from Nothing is True on their faces), and they seem like decent lads. I just wish I liked their music a bit more, so I can legitimately brag about it and really care about the band. But it’s just not my thing. There are little moments throughout the album that show potential of being enjoyable to me, but then it defaults back to the metal-core screaming and I just want it to be over.

It’s sort of big standard metal. Not a great album.

September 14, 2025 I'll listen to another metalcore-labelled album when I have the strength to do so September 20, 2025 HL: "Anything Can Happen", "Jonny Sniper", "Adieu" switches between amiable electro rock and screamo. Especially that screamo

I don’t really get Enter Shikari. I have nothing against them, but their heavy trance/electronic crossover just isn’t my thing. Sure, they do it better than almost every single one of the horrible bands that followed - there’s just every few tracks that truly grabs my attention. Also, why isn’t Take to the Skies ending in “Adieu”, the title and fading outro taken into consideration?

My main issue with Enter Shikari is that they take themselves too seriously. It seems like an obvious thing to say, but mixing EDM with metal is pretty silly. Other bands lean into the silliness of this, which makes it more fun (Electric Callboy, Babymetal, etc.) but Enter Shikari have no tongue-in-cheek about them, which ends up making them feel a bit cringey. On this album, they’re at their best when the synths are less prevalent, but I’d also add that the screaming vocals are also a bit bad. So with less synth, and more melodic vocals, I’d say it would be decent. Otherwise, it’s a bit meh.

I've enjoyed a later album of theirs, but I knew this was going to be rough when they opened with just yelling "shit" twice.

Not for me

There's a pretty narrow range in which the kind of screamed vocals Enter Shikari uses work. And they missed that range. The recently viral Miss World Chile somehow find a nice range of screaming growl that you can't imagine coming out of that person. I don't know what Enter Shikari's Rou Reynolds looks like, but it doesn't matter as I don't want to hear those screams either way. While the vocals are the big problem on "Take to the Skies," the combination of post-hardcore and trance is intriguing. In theory. But there was only once that the music seemed to touch on the potential of that genre mash-up.

Was enjoying until the vocals started. This is a joke surely?

This aged like milk. Anyone who wants to discover great metalcore / post-hardcore acts infusing electronic elements into their compositions should try to listen to early Genghis Tron or The Armed first. And the production values on this thing are simply horrible (bad dynamics on the mix, thin-sounding drums and backing vocals...). I don't know what's the most appalling thing here... Bad taste or bad ear? I've just learnt through one of the reviews in this section that Enter Shikari once opened for Linkin Park. That might explain a few things... Ironically, that sort of gig didn't bring them the expected level of fame the band probably hoped for. It warranted them a place on this users' list, though. Better than nothing, I guess. 1/5 for the artistry and purposes of this list of essential albums. 5/10 for more general purposes (4/4 for the musicianship, 0/1 for the production values + 1/5 for the artistry). Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ----- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 33 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 42 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 85 (including this one) ---- Émile, quelques récentes réponses au dessus... Je me suis retrouvé à devoir écrire une chronique non prévue au départ pour le site, en plus de la traduction de mon interview. D'où le fait que les nouvelles réponses se font attendre. Sorry ! J'espère que tu profites bien de ton été...

Rubbish

I try to be reasonable and see the best in albums but after 3 tracks I gave up on this. Unoriginal, devoid of any spark of creativity. Follow the screaming hordes.

Sorry person who added this, but this visually made me cringe up the moment the instrumentals started, and every time I started to ease into it a bit, it would do something to toss me right back into the Hellfire that is this album. The sound is that of an album that could be realistically played anywhere and nowhere at the same time. I could imagine hearing this blaring out of a stranger's car and not batting an eye and being concerned simultaneously. Post-hardcore just has so much great product in the world, I don't know why you'd try to drag it down with dated 2000s synths, and I say that as someone who added a 70s disco album. I could see the appeal, I guess, but if an acquaintance puts this on, I'm laughing at them, and they know they deserve it just a tiny bit.

This has been in my backlog for a bit, and I had been holding out since it seems very much not for me and I figured it'd be a slog. All of that proved to be true. This was rough, long, and a slog to get through. Not great at all.

My daughter getting kidnapped would be less distressing than being made to listen to this awful album.