Pendulum are without doubt one of the best live performers on the planet and prized assets for festival goers. The question on everyone’s lips is, can they produce a studio album that matches, captures and exhilarates to the same level as their live sets?
In short, no. This may be due to the simply awesome live shows they put on and the impossibility of transferring that energy from the stage to the studio. They’ve made great strides with Immersion and it’s much more cohesive as an album than Propane Nightmares, lead single ‘Watercolour’ acts as a necessary bridging point between the two albums. The electro/rock fusion no longer takes centre stage but is still very prominent and more finely tuned as a result and the revistation to their drum n bass roots is announced loudly by ‘Salt in the Wounds’.
The new-found cohesiveness is exemplified by two parter ‘The Island’, the first of which is rather conventional, thick synth line building steadily and leading to part two ‘Dusk’, where dizzying beats, bleeps, faders and builds let fly in Justice-esque fashion, which will be massive live. They may not have matched the heady heights of The Prodigy’s Invaders Must Die for the electro/rock combo but it’s not for the want of trying which included the enlisting of Liam Howlett on ‘Immunize’.
While they have the musical subtly of being hit in the face with a shovel, there is something ingratiating about it even if they remain a dish best served live.