Songfacts®:

• This is the first single from British Post-Hardcore band Enter Shikari's third studio album, A Flash Flood of Colour. It was released on September 20, 2011 as a digital download. "Quelle Surprise," which was made available in May 2011, was originally intended to be the first official release from the set, but the band decided not to include it in the end.
• Singer Rou Reynolds explained the song's meaning to Kerrang! magazine: "It's about bouncing back from feeling down in the snake pit or being at a dead end in your life. Concentrating on the positive and caring about friendship, openness and compassion."
• Bassist Chris Batten told Noisecreep why this was selected as the first single from A Flash Flood of Colour. He explained: "When you've got a whole new album's worth of material, you kind of want to kick back in with a bang, and 'Sssnakepit' was just the one that seemed to do that for us. We were aware that we were going to be releasing it quite a while before the album actually came out so we wanted something that crowds are going to be able to relate to, that showed some progression, as well as something that [says] 'We're still here. We're still doing what people like about us.' So that track had that all in it really."
• Reynolds told Kerrang! the album title was intended to describe the sound on offer. He said: "I think that the sound of the album is really colourful, that's certainly what we were aiming for. There's a lot going on in the songs, lots of different styles and ideas. I definitely wouldn't describe it as being a grey album."