Enter Shikari Shift Gears With New Single, 'Supercharge'

23 May 2017 | 1:12 pm | Alex Sievers
Originally Appeared In

The band's new single 'Supercharge' features U.K. rapper, Big Narstie; a career first for Enter Shikari.

The band's new single 'Supercharge' also features U.K. rapper, Big Narstie; a career first for Enter Shikari.


Enter Shikari's singer Rou Reynolds has guested on a handful of other band's songs over the years, more recently being Hacktivist's 'Taken' and Stray From The Path's 'Eavesdropper'. On top of that, in 2015, the band allowed other producers and artists to have at their most excellent 2015 full-length 'The Mindsweep' which birthed the solid remix LP, 'The Mindsweep: Hospitalised'; whose 'Interlude' track saw German band Erised craft a whole new eerily beautiful song from.

But now the tables turn as Enter Shikari themselves bring in a guest vocalist for the first time in their career. This comes in the form of their new single 'Supercharge', which features English grime MC Big Narstie - AKA Tyrone Lindo - rapping away in the track's second verse. Look, it's not that great and is easily the weakest part of the whole song. (I even cut his part out and made my own non-Big Narstie edit for my personal use.)

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Of course, Enter Shikari have had rapping-sections in their songs before (see: 'Never Let Go Of The Microscope' and 'Tribalism'), but this is the first time they've come from another mouth that wasn't owned by one of the four band members. Yet despite such an inclusion, this is still Enter Shikari at the end of the day. From Rob Rolfe's signature drumming, the sharp yet wobbly electronic synths mixing in with the remaining instrumentation, the song's breakdown, Reynolds' strong vocal deliveries (in both his singing and his screaming), and those gang vocal parts; this is still Enter Shikari many know and adore so much.

Also in their typical fashion, this song doesn't exactly fit within the sounds and genre of their previous record; something that's sure to be true of the sonic direction of their next LP.

As for a little bit of history, 'Supercharge' was created last summer when Reynolds and old mate Big Narstie were introduced by mutual photographer friend Jordan Curtis Hughes. Reynolds acted as a producer for the track and was assisted by the band's live engineer Tim Morris with it then being mixed down by David Kosten (Everything Everything/Bat For Lashes).

Of the new single, Reynolds details how this collaboration between the grime MC and sharpish genre-benders came about, saying:

“I started writing a lot of new music at the start of 2016. ‘Supercharge’ emerged after a pretty vicious cull, and we began getting excited about it as touring started to quiet down later in 2016. Through mutual friends here in London we got in touch with Narstie, who came down and hung at the studio September, nailing his bars like a pro. I’m excited to get the track out into the world now."

As for myself, while I did enjoy this track, it's definitely in Enter Shikari's lower-tier songs, which also includes the likes of 'No Sleep Tonight', 'Sorry You're Not A Winner', 'Redshift' and a handful of other tunes. But what do you think?

Stream the funky, Muse-like 'Supercharge' below.