Pendulum: Hold Your Colour

Herald rating: * * *

Drum'n'bass is mostly either dark and heavy or just jazzy and it's rare to get an album that's heavy, funky, and fun, all in one. But that's what Pendulum have done.

They're from Perth, and this album has the best beats to come out of Aussie since Scribe started conquering the charts across the ditch.

However, the candystore bleeps and beats of Fasten Your Seatbelt (featuring the Freestylers) are annoying and make it more like a ringtone or an ad jingle than a song.

Another irritating tendency is for songs such as the Daft Punk-esque Girl In The Fire, to start off like a TV show theme. But that doesn't last and the songs erupt into swingin' d'n'b anthems such as Tarantula, The Terminal (an Oz version of Concord Dawn if ever there was one), and the stunner Slam.

Hold Your Colour is a swaggering, rump-rattling album but it has too much variation. Maybe there should have been a fewer tracks and a more straight-ahead drum'n'bass, because that's what these lads do best.

Label: Breakbeat Kaos