After a rousing reception two years ago, Pendulum are back and bigger than ever, writes Scott Kara
It's nearly two years since Pendulum turned the main field at the Big Day Out into a writhing, jumped-up party. Back then the Australian six-piece were reasonably big, following two successful drum'n'bass-meets-rock albums. But the thousands who turned out to see them, in what was one of the biggest afternoon Big Day Out crowds on record, even surprised the band.
"To be honest apart from Perth [the band's hometown] that was the best show of the Big Day Out," says Rob Swire, the frontman, and music and business brains behind the band. "We never clocked that the support was that heavy in New Zealand before. We'd played a few strange shows there before in ... What's that place? Dunedin? But that [Big Day Out] show blew us away."
And they have continued their rise, with latest album Immersion making it to No. 1 on the British album charts and peaking at No. 3 here.
Swire puts the band's popularity down to a combination of an intense live show, which they bring to Trusts Stadium in Auckland on Wednesday, their catchy anthemic songs, and the party mood conjured up by the band's fusion of electronic music and rock.
Starting out as a drum'n'bass band in Perth they released 2005 debut album, Hold Your Colour, with the mighty d'n'b anthem Tarantula on it; they took on a more rock influence for follow up In Silico; and on Immersion they tip back towards a more electronic sound.
"Hold Your Colour was the least pressure we felt doing an album, and then when In Silico came about there was a lot of pressure-not from anyone else-but from ourselves over the quality of the stuff we were writing and the direction we wanted to go in."
That indecision changed the sound of the band, temporarily any way, because on Immersion he believes the band have found their sound. It's an energetic, climactic, and, at times frantic dance rock mix that takes as much from drum'n'bass and electro house as it does from rock and metal.
"It was funny listening to the record; after we made it I said to Gareth [McGrillen, bass player and DJ], 'It's weird how it sounds like a sort of professional Pendulum. Or grown-up Pendulum'," he laughs.
It's an adventurous album too, with The Island a sweeping two-part opus, Salt In the Wounds another grandiose gesture, and Comprachicos which has a tough industrial, Nine Inch Nails feel before taking off into pummelling drum'n'bass.
And there's a fair amount of fist-pumping cheese thrown in among the banging beats.
Swire stops short of calling Pendulum his band, but he says he treats it like he would his kids. "If I had kids that is," he laughs. "It feels that close to me that I don't want to see people piss on it, I don't want to see people take it for something it isn't, and I want to make sure we come across the right way in everything we do.
"So yeah, I make sure we are heading in the right direction."
LOWDOWN
Who: Pendulum
Where & when: TSB Arena, Wellington, Tuesday; Trusts Stadium, Auckland, Wednesday
Latest album: Immersion, out now
Past albums: Hold Your Colour (2005); In Silico (2008)
-TimeOut
