Enter Shikari’s ‘Step Up’ is the last representative of the band’s Common Dreads album, their second, released back in 2009, that’ll be showing up on the blog here. If I was at this point in this series maybe a decade ago, there would have been a couple more posts for other songs on there. Namely, ‘Solidarity’ and ‘The Jester’. But there was a point when I would have my phone on shuffle and, despite the whole purpose of shuffle being random in the song selection, those two songs would start to play on almost constant basis. And as the years went on, I slowly fell out of favour with other numbers like ‘Gap in the Fence’ and ‘Hectic’. But the posts for those two up and available to read, so you can see my thoughts from a time when I was properly into them.

But through it all, ‘Step Up’ has stood tall while those fell to the figurative wayside. With its place as the third song on Common Dreads, it helps to further establish the mood of the album coming after the titular intro track and ‘Solidarity’. But while ‘Solidarity’ acts as a call for unity and is something for the fans with its musical/lyrical callbacks to refrains and motifs from their previous album, ‘Step Up’ is the slap in the face – telling people to wake up and pay attention to the injustice that’s happening on the regular around the world. Vocalist Rou Reynolds, alongside bassist and backing vocalist Chris Batten, critique the passivity I think the majority of us are prone to when we witness something happening horrible on the news and rally to us that, by doing a little research and taking action, we can at least play a part in making a difference. However small the result may be, the main point is that an attempt was made.

The track begins with its frantic synths, spilling over from the preceding track while that comes to a close, that soon make way for drummer Rob Rolfe’s thunderous entrance. It’s not too long that, after a dominant roar from Reynolds, proceedings properly get going, with he and Batten doing a respective call and response, shouting versus melodic singing dynamic – a thing that was very much a staple in those earlier Enter Shikari albums. For a post-hardcore type of band, they were never too proud to showcase their prowess at harmonies. There’s plenty of those to latch on to here also. I guess another notable part is the spoken word bridge Reynolds delivers nearing halfway through. It’s not the last time you’ll be hearing that sort of vocal delivery on the record if you’re listening from front to back. In fact, the very next song contains it too. But it’s there that Reynolds bluntly states that we don’t know how good we’ve got it while other people are suffering, screaming his frustration which then leads into the song’s second half. It’s great stuff. This is the last from Common Dreads on here. It’s not the last of Enter Shikari.