Rou Reynolds describes the early stages of creating a new album as “standing at the foot of a mountain”. You’re looking back at the peak that you just scaled beforehand, he says, wondering how the hell you’re going to manage to do it all over again.
“It’s super-disconcerting and disorienting,” the Enter Shikari frontman gulps, explaining how he felt wrapping up the incredibly successful era for the band’s 2017 LP The Spark – which won a Kerrang! Award for Best Album the following year – while nervously looking ahead to album number six.
Fortunately, motivation to start hiking came from a surprising source last year. While gathering a collection of essays and lyrics for his book Dear Future Historians, Rou found himself looking back over the St Albans titans’ prolific career for the very first time. “We always relentlessly look forward,” he says, “and it was quite nice for once, because it gave me a sense of history and perspective, and gave me a grasp of how far we’ve come, and what we’ve achieved.”
READ THIS: 13 albums to kickstart the revolution
This reflective period gave Rou the idea that he wanted to create the ultimate Enter Shikari album – “It’s a real signpost, and it’s like, ‘Look at where we’ve come from, and look at what we can do,’” he grins.
Welcome, then, to Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible, Enter Shikari’s grandest statement yet (and, given everything that’s come before it, that’s really saying something). Excellent lead single { The Dreamer’s Hotel } premiered on BBC Radio 1 last week, and it’s a venomous sign of what’s to come from the full release, which is due out on April 17 via So Recordings…
Why was { The Dreamer’s Hotel } chosen as the new album’s lead single, Rou?
“I think it has a general excitement to it; it’s quite fast-paced and it feels a little bit on edge, even in the choruses. There’s this juxtaposition, thematically, where the verses are all fury, and then the choruses are trying to convey what ‘The Dreamer’s Hotel’ is supposed to be. It’s this place of safety and possibility and imagination, outside of the furore of society. The whole thing seems to have an urgency to it, and it just felt like a good foot forward to lead with.”