Shatner’s ‘Enlightenmental’ Still Sounds Future-Facing

Released in 2018, Enlightenmental still feels tuned to the present: clever people, dangerous systems and guitar pop bright enough to carry some genuinely dark ideas.

Power pop with a telescope

The Leeds band’s official description calls its sound multilayered guitar pop with a science-fiction tint. That is a useful starting point, but it understates how much tension sits underneath the hooks. Frontman and songwriter Jim Bower uses big subjects—technology, superstition, environmental damage and human self-importance—without turning the songs into lectures.

The record opens with “Heterosapien,” then moves through “We Go Woo,” “We Are the Others,” “Let There Be Light” and “March of the Numpties.” Later tracks such as “Living in a Maze” and “Speed of Dark” push the album’s central question further: what happens when human intelligence outruns human judgment?

A fourth chapter earned by persistence

Enlightenmental arrived on March 9, 2018 after a successful crowdfunding campaign. It followed Energise, Thirteen O’Clock and Wow Signals, extending a catalog that had already made Shatner a cult name around Leeds.

The lineup combined Jim Bower and bassist Rick Bower with backing vocalist Sarah Niven, drummer Anthony Sargeant and guitarist Paul Morricone. The result is compact rather than sprawling: nine core tracks plus two bonus cuts, with four-part harmonies and dense guitars doing as much storytelling as the lyrics.

What came after Shatner

The band’s official Bandcamp notes that Shatner was last seen live in 2019. Bower then carried the songwriting thread into solo work, releasing Life Support in 2020 and The Fourth Wall in 2024.

That later context makes Enlightenmental feel less like a final transmission and more like a hinge between phases. It captures a band with a mature identity, while pointing toward the concerns Bower would continue to explore outside it.

The album remains available to stream and purchase through Shatner’s official Bandcamp page.