Enter Shikari and The Offspring to headline Slam Dunk 2023

Slam Dunk Festival has confirmed the 2023 event will be headlined by Enter Shikari and The Offspring.

Slam Dunk will be returning to Hatfield Park on 27 May and Leeds Temple Newsam on 28 May. Joining Enter Shikari and The Offspring will be Creeper, Billy Talent and Bowling For Soup.

The festival has also confirmed exclusive reunions from The Academy Is and Kids In Glass Houses, who will celebrating the 15th anniversary of debut album ‘Smart Casual’.

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“Slam Dunk 2008 fell a day before Smart Casual was released and marked the start of a pretty unforgettable journey for our band,” said vocalist Aled Phillips.

“It feels very fitting that 15 years later to the day we can come back and celebrate a special part of our career at Slam Dunk 2023. We hope to see some familiar and new faces there and can’t wait to get back out onto stage again. It’s been too long.”

Less Than Jake will also be appearing at Slam Dunk 2023 for a performance celebrating the 25th anniversary of their third album ‘Hello Rockview’.

Also set to perform at Slam Dunk are the likes of  Four Year Strong, Malevolence, Holding Absence, Trash Boat, Zebrahead, Maggie Lindemann, Noahfinnce and Real Friends.

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Enter Shikari’s Rou Reynolds said: “I’ve been intoxicated by the idea of headlining Slam Dunk again ever since our ‘Take To The Skies’ celebration headline set back in 2017. It’s such a great festival, always nails its bills, and has the added bonus that us lads can actually cycle to the Southern date, being that Hatfield is a neighbouring town to us!

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“In fact, essentially, this will be our biggest ‘hometown’ show ever, now that the festival has grown even more. I think playing outdoors is my favourite thing to do in life,” he continued. “Just being able to look up and see the sky, with the expanse of people underneath it, all sharing the same emotions and experience, it’s just such a raw, beautiful, and reifying thing.”

He added: “We’re already thinking about stage production ideas, we’re going to do everything we can to make this our biggest show yet.”

Early bird tickets for Slam Dunk 2023 go on sale this Friday (2 February) at 10am from here.

Pendulum and Enter Shikari’s Rou Reynolds backstage at Reading Festival. CREDIT: Rukes

Over the weekend, Enter Shikari performed at Reading & Leeds Festival before Reynolds joined Pendulum onstage for a new remix of ‘Sorry You’re Not A Winner’. 

Talking to NME about how that collaboration came about, Reynolds said: “Gareth [McGrillen] and Rob [Swire] just got in touch and basically said that they’re thinking about doing a remix of ‘Sorry You’re Not A Winner’, and I was like ‘okay sick!’, what a surreal message to get,” Reynolds explained.

“They sent it over, and there’s a lot of different demo changes in that track so I was like ‘this is so interesting, what are they going to do with it?’ And it’s so good. It’s killer.”

He went on to say that Enter Shikari are working on a new record and it “seems to be coming together as wall-to-wall bangers.”