Morning all. So yesterday we had two entries on the challenge, and that's something that's going to have to run all the way up to the festival if I'm going to get this whole thing done.
With that in mind, I offered this album up to Twitter, see if I could get a guest reviewer to do it for me. Not being lazy, I just wanted someone who likes Pendulum to write it. So a big thanks goes to Paul Smiles find him on Twitter here for stepping forward and taking it on.
Anyway, enough of me muttering on. Here we go...
When your first album is titled Hold Your Colour, it's a statement of intent and it bleeds dedication. Laying roots exclusively in the ever evolving animal that is drum and bass, Pendulum announced themselves to be people capible of rocking their beats.
In May 2008 the band had the huge task of making the dreaded second album. When Pendulum were charged with task they chose not for adaptation but evolution. Taking their insane tempo and jaw breaking beats from their original album and force feeding it a blend of rock and symph. The name is a tip of the hat to Nirvana's In Utero. The hardcore amoung the fans may not look favouribly at the new offering but their inclination for change helped break them into a much bigger audiance and on release of their second single from In Silico which was aptly titled Propane Nightmares this is the perfect example of how the inlflux of a new sound can help the band produce a more refined record.
Picked up and pimped from everything from movies to computer games the song shattered charts and people preconceptions on drum and bass. The songs now hard a guitar edge other than the heavy drum and bass, it allowed them onto festival stages to share their songs.
The songs on this album are born festival winners. Fans get injected with energy and the music gets movement in even the most jaded of viewer. Still present though on songs like Granite, Visions and The Other Side these songs still have in their DNA the origins of what brought them to the dance. These songs beats are so heavy with the right earphones you can do some serious damage. Its a true homage to their origins and shows that no matter how different hardcore fans believe the second album to be its still a drum and bass record.
The album starts at a blistering pace with opeing track Showdown as the track starts one can be forgiven to think it isnt a simple extension of the first album. Fast and relentless we only catch breath at track 5 which is Midnight Runner only to be hammered all the way until the final track The Tempest. All tracks have incredible tempo and even the "slow" songs are not that slow.
Propane Nightmares is the jewel in the crown and is incredible live(trust me) it reached number 9 in the UK top 40 and the album scaled all the way to number 2 in the Album charts. The album celebrated a commercial success for the band and every band no matter how anti-media or main stream they are need commercial success. Check it out here.
This release not only put a little known niche drum and bass Australian group called Pendulum on the map, it made them the damn map.
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