Enter Shikari‘s Rou Reynolds has spoken to NME about the struggles that led to their decision to take a hiatus, and what the future holds beyond that.
Last month saw the band announce to fans that they’d be taking an indefinite hiatus, with plans to “fall dormant as a recording and performing entity” at the end of 2027 after another stretch of touring.
“We are lucky enough to have built an audience who understand that the less-trodden path is sometimes the more interesting journey,” they shared. “However, it gets to the point where the often difficult terrain of that path starts to frazzle and drain the humble traveller.”
They admitted that their “priorities and capacities had changed” over the years, and they’d had “difficult conversations about what the next few years should hold” even before Reynolds shared his mental health struggles in the wake of completing recent album ‘Lose Your Self’. The frontman then spoke to NME about “the cocktail of emotions” he was feeling after sharing the news.
“It feels weird because we’ve got over a year, anything that we were talking about becomes reality,” he told us. “As far as we’re concerned, we’ve got touring to do, we’re making plans. It’s this weird contradiction of talking about a hiatus as well as making more and more plans. It’s an odd position to be in.”
As for the fans’ reaction, Reynolds said he found himself “almost detaching from the announcement and not really reading many people’s messages”.
“There have been some really emotional and heartfelt messages sent our way, which I’m so grateful for, but it doesn’t feel right that I should be reading them yet,” he admitted. “Personally, we’re happy it’s out in the public because we pride ourselves on our connection with our audience and our honesty. We never like hiding anything. Now we can just have conversations about it, reminisce and plan.”
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As well as speaking to NME about the financial struggles and personal impact of touring, the frontman also opened up about where his head was at and what might be on the horizon for the band. Check out the rest of our interview with Reynolds below, where he told us about winding down, the group’s upcoming UK tour, and a few more surprises coming in 2027 before Enter Shikari take their well-earned break.
NME: Hello, Rou. ‘Lose Your Self’ came out back in April to great acclaim, but there wasn’t a lot of activity around it. What can you tell us about your headspace around that time and how you went from that record to making this decision for a hiatus?
“Looking back at the very beginning of this year, we were mastering the album. I remember the absolute race up until Christmas to hit that deadline. These were all self-imposed deadlines, but we’d made lots of plans for the year and really wanted to hit them.
“For me, the perfectionism took hold and I was just mistreating myself, working ridiculous hours. Our mastering engineer was in Nashville, our mixing engineer was in New Zealand, so the hours I was doing with them was insane. This is probably the last album I’ll ever produce by myself. I get far too perfectionistic about the details; the balance in my life goes, my mental health goes. I can laugh about it now, but that was the start of something. It was honestly horrid, and meant that we didn’t tour. I can’t say I enjoyed any of the album release shows. For that era, I was in an extremely bad place.
“We were already having conversations, and this put them up the priority list. We started to make some decisions. It’s been a rollercoaster of a year for sure!”
Shikari’s 27-year history and survival is no mean feat, given that you’re such a hard band to pigeonhole and the music industry wants things in neat little boxes. Would you say that weathering that over the course of nearly three decades has also led to this decision?
“It’s hard to say. I’m sure it had an influence. We’ve toured with a lot of bands, and I can manufacture a sense of what it’s like to be in your average band. We’re certainly not that, for all sorts of reasons. Whether it’s the extra stresses that the breadth of the music takes, the activism, the intense touring schedules that we’ve put on ourselves.
“When you’re 20, you’ve got the energy, and you can take it all on. We’ve all got broader lives now, and perhaps don’t have the ability to throw yourself at absolutely everything. It doesn’t matter if you’re sleep-deprived and on the other side of the world, because for most of the year you can get through it. That’s not so much the case anymore, as I brutally found out at the start of this year.
“I’m sure it had some kind of influence. It would be nice to play in a band that plays middle-of-the-road music with asinine lyrics, but fortunately that’s never what we’ve been drawn to.”
How do you imagine the future beyond 2027?
“It’s not like we’re going to go away and put our heads in the sand. We’ll still be connected. We might still be in the music industry in other ways, but there’s a lot to he hopeful about. It’s just whether we can grind things forward.”
You’ve spoken of how your upcoming UK and European tour could well be the last time many fans get to see you, and that your ambitious production plans will “blow your dad off”…
“It’s going to be the biggest show that we’ve ever put together. It’s quite flamboyant, and the production is us pushing ourselves. It’s going to be a vast step that picks and chooses from every era of the band, as we often do. There should be a bit of something in there for everyone. We’re just buzzing, really.
“These are some of our favourite venues too. Ally Pally, for instance – that place is just magical for me. It’s so far from your standard arena covered in corporate feel. It’s the people’s palace in this beautiful, majestic, romantic building. We’re absolutely buzzing to get back in some of these places.”
And how are you going to handle next year’s shows? It’ll be 20 years of your debut album, ‘Take To The Skies’, and you’ve also got to round off your career so far and say ‘goodbye for now’…
“There’s so much we could do. It’s just about prioritising. I’m sure there will be some debate as we’ve got three albums with anniversaries [15 years of ‘A Flash Flood Of Colour’ and 10 years of ‘The Spark’] and then we’re going away, so picking the setlists will be absolutely horrendous.
“We’re coming to conclusions right now that we do want to make the most of it and go out on a high. We’re just trying to figure out what we want to do, and hopefully not just celebrate the albums that are having their birthdays, but the band and everything we’ve achieved as a whole.”
Could there also be more new material?
“There should be another track before the end of the year, and then there’s bits and pieces we’re working on. It felt so weird when we made that announcement and then released a song a few weeks later; it was a weird juxtaposition. We’re still very much an active band, and we’ll probably be more active than ever for at least 12 months. We’ll really relish it as well because we know it’s going to be put on pause. I would expect some new music.”
And what about your own life away from Shikari? Will you be doing more acting after your role in The War Of The Worlds?
“I’m not sure yet. I’m excited about a lot of different possibilities. I’d love to do some theatre again. I’ve wanted to do a solo record forever. It’s a bit of a running joke in the band, as I’ve been saying I’m about to do one for about 15 years. But then, of course, a tour or something comes up. Finally, I think I’ll be able to do that, which will be very different. There’s all sorts; I’m just trying to decide what’s going to take my focus.”
What’s the vibe of the solo stuff? Thick cable-knit jumpers by the fire in the woods?
“Ha! Well, I wrote stuff 10-15 years ago that I’ve had but is just clearly not Shikari, so I just kept it on the back burner. I haven’t done anything with it or written anything for quite a while, so it won’t be until late next year that I start working on that.
“For now, I honestly don’t know as there are many directions it could go in. Knowing me, it’ll probably go in all of them. It’ll still be all over the shop!”
Enter Shikari’s 2026 UK tour kicks off in Nottingham on Friday (November 13). Check out full UK and European dates below and visit here for tickets and more information.
NOVEMBER
10 – Brussels, Forest National
11 – Tilburg, 013
13 – Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena
14 – Cardiff, Utilita Arena
15 – Hull, Connexin Live
18 – Glasgow, Hydro
19 – Manchester, Co-op Live
20 – London, Alexandra Palace
21 – London, Alexandra Palace
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