[7] Towards the end of the tour, the group released a new track, "We Can Breathe in Space, They Just Don't Want Us to Escape", which had been produced by Andy Gray.

The album has a distinct stylistic change to Take to the Skies, most notably, more use of clean vocals and a mixture of more electronic music genres, including drum and bass, electro house and dubstep, as well as the trance and electronic hardcore which was explored on their debut album.

In Common Dreads, the band's lyrical subjects concern socio-political topics, like in "Step Up", a song that critiques free world trade.

The song "Fanfare for the Conscious Man" contains lyrical connotations to the injustice of the various wars the government were engaging in whilst Enter Shikari were writing the album, the line, "Our gracious queen should grasp her crown, and take a good fucking swing at Blair and Brown" confirms the anti-war views of this song.

[20][21][22] It was announced via the Enter Shikari website that the second single from the album would be "No Sleep Tonight", to be released on 17 August 2009.

[23] Enter Shikari's song "Wall" premièred on Zane Lowe's show on 29 September 2009, but is not scheduled for release as an official single.

In late September, the band posted a video on their YouTube channel of "Antwerpen" filmed live in "The 'Low".

[29] In June and July 2010, the band performed on Warped Tour, and then appeared at the Reading and Leeds Festivals.

Pete Paphides of The Times gave the album 2 stars out of 5, describing it as "a titanically inadvisable mash-up between Gallows and John Craven's Newsround.

"[42] Common Dreads entered the album charts at number 16 selling 15,000 copies in its first week.