After Germany, I went ahead and tried out a new country for live music : Italy. I flew all the way down to Milan to attend the first European night of Enter Shikari's Take to the Skies celebration.

The evening, alongside the entire mainland tour, is opened by Cambridge boys Mallory Knox, whom I have seen quite a few times recently and whom, I am not going to lie, have greatly influenced my decision to do the traveling thing again. The five piece have only been to Italy once before (in support of One OK Rock in 2014), and, therefore, not a lot of people know who they are. But those who do, like myself, my friend Mia, a couple of people on barrier or the guy next to me who looks and sounds like he has waited to hear Beggars live his whole life, they are loud and into it, they open a little moshpit and they sing along, they headbang and they give it their all. 

On stage, as always, Mallory Knox are having the time of their life and look genuinely delighted to be here. Frontman Mikey Chapman will try his hand at Italian, and his couple of words will be rewarded by warm applause from the crowd. The band's performance is flawless and impeccable as ever, and I find myself in a position where, once again, I have run out of words. 

The setlist is mostly composed of tracks extracted from the band's latest record, Wired, in the form of the bouncy California or the electric Giving It Up. Asymmetry is well represented as well, and there is, as always, a nod to Signals with single and ultimate banger Beggars.

And that's it.

Lighthouse has disappeared from the setlist and I am pretty sure that the last time I saw Mallory Knox and they didn't play it, it was because the song did not exist yet.

Imagine my confusion.

The crowd's reaction and the amount of people waiting at the end of the show to have a chat with the guys tells me this set has been nothing short of a success, and when the band comes back to Italy next month (in support of Simple Plan in Milan and Padova), there is no doubt it should go just as brilliantly. 

Half an hour later, the crowd is absolutely ecstatic, and... Enter Shikari aren't even on stage yet. This is my first Italian gig ever and I don't really know what to expect. Most bands don't tour Italy and the crowds don't have that much of a reputation abroad.

According to my friend Mia, though, Italian crowds are known to be very passionate, and the least I can say is this is very true. From the first to the last second, the band aren't the only ones celebrating ten years of an album - they have an adoring crowd celebrating it too, celebrating the band they love.

It's Enter Shikari they have on stage, so, unsurprisingly, celebration comes in the form of joyous walls of deaths, circle pits (including one featuring the band's bass player, Chris Batten, who is either fearless or has a death wish, your pick), crowdsurfing and loud, very, very loud singalongs. 

The energy shown by the crowd is only matched by the one on stage.

Enter Shikari are one of these bands that, technically, don't have much to prove anymore. Everything they release is highly successful, every single one of their tours is met by a rare enthusiasm and a huge turnout, and they have one of the best reputations out of every band in this scene. Mention Enter Shikari to anyone who knows them and you will only hear praise - praise about their live show, praise about the quality of their music, praise about how down to Earth they are, praise about their political and human engagement. Enter Shikari aren't a band who has some sort of "hype" around them, like a fad that comes and goes. If they have any sort of hype around, it's been there for ten solid years. I got into their music in 2011, and for the past six years, the enthusiasm and excitement about them, their tours and projects has been the same. If anything, it has grown with them, it has improved with the amount of people who love them. 

They are only getting bigger and going more and more places. Since I started listening to them, they have headlined festivals, they have headlined the second stage at Download twice, they have done arena tours. Many a band would just rest on their laurels after that. I have been lucky enough to see Enter Shikari live fourteen times and every time, they play like a band who still has everything to prove. They play with the enthusiasm and conviction of a band on their first tour, a band who doesn't know what kind of crowd they are going to face. 

This tour is not just your average Enter Shikari tour (is there such a thing as "your average Enter Shikari tour", though? I don't believe so). It is the ten year anniversary of the band's début album, Take to The Skies. Released on the 19th of March 2007, the album has become a staple in our scene, a gateway into heavy music for a lot of people, and songs like Mothership, or Sorry You're Not a Winner, have become absolute classics. It's been ten years and God forbid if you don't clap at the right times during Sorry You're Not a Winner. It's been ten years and hearing any of these songs live still sends fans into an unmatched frenzy. It's been a whole decade of an album which stands the test of time and is still relevant to this day. As frontman Rou Reynolds remind us, the lyrics to Labyrinth, today, ring truer than ever. "We'll break the walls".

A thing I adored about this show is how Enter Shikari did not just play the album, leave the stage and come back for some sort of half arsed, greatest hits encore. Not that I expected them to. Still, it was a pleasant and welcome surprise to hear songs off different albums dotted here and there (Juggernauts, Torn Apart or Anaesthetist). It shows the band's evolution and how all their albums can be connected together, how they are not just four random collections of random songs. (Not that anyone would ever think they were, but it never hurts to be reminded of an artist's genius) And, without even thinking about the cohesion in Enter Shikari's music and career, Sorry You're Not a Winner into Juggernauts might have been one of the best, most brilliant things I have ever heard performed on a stage. 

Scratch that.

Maybe that show, as a whole, was one of the best, most brilliant things I have ever seen performed on a stage.