"‘Rock’ is already treated as a marginal art form, we shouldn’t create division within it."

Following an incident last night at Enter Shikari's show in Southend involving Palaye Royale, Shikari have made a statement addressing the increasingly abusive behaviour towards Palaye Royale and their fans on the tour.

Last night an incident occurred where a member of the audience intentionally sought trouble by abusing Palaye Royale and their fans, resulting in a member of Palaye stepping in to defend their fans. The person in question was violent towards venue security, and was escorted off the premises.

The lengthy statement made by Enter Shikari was posted on their private Facebook group. One fan has screenshot the statement and posted it to Twitter, and the whole statement has been reproduced in full below.

A statement made from @ENTERSHIKARI personally to their fans. (I hope they don't mind me posting this). These people who display this behaviour do not reflect the rest of the actual fanbase. Can only apologise to @PalayeRoyale and hope it stops so we can all enjoy the shows. pic.twitter.com/K5eqj7bGTo — Temple In The Woods (@EthanFanshawee) January 20, 2019

After addressing last night's incident specifically, the statement goes on to condemn the behaviour of a subset of fans for their recent behaviour towards Palaye Royale's fans, sharing "something else we cannot condone is the repeated ramping up of abusive behaviour against Palaye Royale and their fans. A very small group of Enter Shikari [fans] have taken it upon themselves to encourage online bullying of Palaye Royale fans, orchestrated verbal abuse of the band at shows, and the specific intent to make Palaye Royale’s set as unpleasant an experience as possible for their fans. We will not tolerate this."

Read Enter Shikari's full statement below:

"(due to it being a busy show night, and management being out the country and unavailable, we are closing the comments on his statement.

if you have questions, you can always email or tweet us)

Last night in Southend, there was an incident where one member of the audience someone who was - from what we can gather from talking to several people involved - there specifically to cause trouble) who was abusing Palaye Royale with highly offensive language, crushing young fans in the front rows and generally making the early part of the night unpleasant for everyone around him.

At the end of Palaye Royale’s set, their drummer went to the barrier to check on fans and (rightly or wrongly, but, adrenalised by what had happened, maybe understandable) confront the individual, an out-of-context video clip of the proceedings catches part of the exchange, but fails to tell the whole story.

the person in question was taken aside, where he proceeded to threaten security, issue extremely violent threats towards Palaye Royale’s merch person, and then ended with a flourish of a threat to burn the building down as he was escorted from the venue.

it goes without saying that we do not, never have, and never will, condone that sort of behaviour. and we will always endeavour to have it squashed as quickly and quietly as possible.

A lot of you know us and our crew, you can spot our crew by their crew shirts, if you ever see anything of this sort, just mention to one of them and it will be looked into.

but, something else we cannot condone is the repeated ramping up of abusive behaviour against Palaye Royale and their fans. A very small group of Enter Shikari [fans] have taken it upon themselves to encourage online bullying of Palaye Royale fans, orchestrated verbal abuse of the band at shows, and the specific intent to make Palaye Royale’s set as unpleasant an experience as possible for their fans. We will not tolerate this.

If you plan on disrupting ANY part of the night, then you plan on ruining the WHOLE night (at least for someone), and we won’t stand for someone coming into our house and deliberately trying to cause trouble; a vast majority of the Palaye Royale fans we have engaged with are lovely people, exactly the same as the vast majority of Enter Shikari fans we know or meet along the way. Many of them ARE also Enter Shikari fans. For them to be treated as somehow “other” is pretty much against every aspect of our band’s ethos.

While we acknowledge that online attention is seductive, we ask you to not share / engage with tweets or commentary designed to disrupt or enflame situations (re-tweeting tweets that start with the word “apparently”, when you were not at a specific show or witness to a specific incident, is not helpful to anyone, except those who have an agenda to deliberate disrupt the shows).

there is no doubt that last night’s incident is an almost direct result of the attempts of a couple of individuals to stir up drama and resentment where none should naturally exist.

We also acknowledge that Palaye Royale aren’t to everyone’s tastes. But Enter Shikari aren’t to everyone’s tastes either, and we went through our own share of this on support tours in our earlier days. Imagine how we would have felt then, had this been happening to us?

It’s a rock show. ‘Rock’ is already treated as a marginal art form, we shouldn’t create division within it.

We maintain that Enter Shikari shows should always be a safe space for anyone who wants to come and enjoy music. We hope that we can now put this all behind us, and move forward positively with what has otherwise been an extremely fun tour’

Thank you"