ENTER SHIKARI’s third album, A Flash Flood Of Colour, is exactly that, an eclectic mix and mash of punishing breakdowns, soaring choruses, squeals and wobbling bass lines which somehow gel to live up to one of the most hyped releases in ‘hardcore’ circles this year.

Recorded late 2011 in Thailand, AFFOC shows a further departure from the post-hardcore sound of their debut, Take To The Skies, and furthers their experimentation with dance and electronica, which resonated through their breakthrough album, Common Dreads. The impeccably mixed 11 track LP is a linear progression to an album which picks from a wider range of electronic elements and is no doubt the strongest effort from the English lads.

AFFOC has a neat mix of tracks, from the heavy hitting ‘Sssnakepit’ which features a heavy syncopated breakdown and aggressive vocal passages through to the almost annoyingly soft and slow album closer ‘Constellations’. Stand out tracks include ‘Hello Tyranosaurus, Meet Tyranacide’ which harks back to their debut album and ‘Gandhi Mate, Gandhi’, which provides a nice change from the D’n’B pace which resounds throughout the album and is their most experimental track to date. Bassist Chris Batten manages to get some amazing almost sub-bass lines through his setup which looks more like a NASA launch system than a bass rig, which compliment Rou Reynold’s manic programming.

The album tackles the usual subject matter as frontman Reynolds screams about the ‘oppression of the man by the corporations’ and such. His delivery is usually literal, and he only occasionally uses thin metaphors to veil the true meaning and therefore the lyrics can sometimes be clumsy and cliché, but you can’t help but feel anger towards the oil companies and war profiteers, so maybe this delivery works best.

AFFOC delivers a sonic punch to the ear canal and is a refreshing change from the usual blandness of synth-core, a genre this album escapes from.

8.0/10

-Luke Bartlett