Album Reviews |

Pendulum



Immersion 7 ( 2010 )
The Genesis / Salt in the Wounds / Watercolour / Set Me on Fire / Crush / Under the Waves / Immunize (feat. Liam Howlett) / The Island - Pt. I (Dawn) / The Island - Pt. II (Dusk) / Comprachicos / The Vulture / Witchcraft / Self Vs. Self (feat. In Flames) / The Fountain (feat. Steven Wilson) / Encoder

There are two schools of thought concerning Pendulum. One roughly goes that Pendulum don't do dance, don't do rock, they do something we don't understand and therefore don't like. The other school of thought is that Pendulum do dance, rock, metal, rave, drum'n'bass and a bit of everything and therefore are utterly fantastic. At the of the day, Pendulum write songs. They're not Prodigy, Chemical Brothers etc who don't so much write songs as create instrumental tracks. Simplistic example, if you can play something using different instrumentation, it's a song. If you can hum the vocal and said vocal melody forms an intrinsic part of the overall performance, it's a song. Pendulum write songs then, for those who may have missed it earlier. Going back to Prodigy, Prodigy were/are essentially one man, a man who is dance through and through. It's not quite so easy to pidgeonhole Pendulum due to their background, two of the three core members were from rock bands before turning to drum'n'bass. They eagerly pursued purer drum'n'bass before concocting their current Pendulum hybrid, a hybrid that's seen them play at Wembley and top the UK album charts. Lots of people clearly like Pendulum in order for them to be able to achieve this. Lots of people also like drinking large amounts of lager and just like that indulgence, too much Pendulum isn't really very good for you.

We've got fifteen tracks lasting sixty seven minutes, a perfect set-length if you're dancing in a field but less so when experienced at home. 'Salt In The Wounds' is a straight-forward dance-thumper that briefly thrills yet far more interesting is lead single 'Waterclour'. With a synth piping merrily away evoking nothing less than late Seventies progressive-rock, 'Watercolor' also sees fit to include treated vocals, relentless beats all only slightly let down by trite lyrical sentiments. 'Crush' is a distorted monster, yet I mean that in a good way. The vocals are heavily processed and down in the mix, but it's not really about the vocals - they are just another sound, another melody. I do have a concern generally though, strip away the 'Pendulum Sound' and the song itself is something you'd expect to find in a late eighties American movie. Such a sense of Pendulum sounding weirdly out of date permeates several tracks here, not least 'Immunize' featuring The Prodigy's Liam Howlett. I do really like 'Crush' and 'Watercolour' yet on the otherhand we have the nine-minute two-parter 'The Island' - gradually the album simply struggles to maintain a high level of interest after a fine first four or five tracks.

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