Pendulum - 'Propane Nightmares'
Pendulum are a very problematic band. They're a brilliant open door into drum'n'bass, their songs are accessible, shiny and HUGE. They're a very loud, very, very poppy introduction to the genre; they take those vworp, vvvwworp noises that damn near characterise the genre and burn them into your brain, bringing jungle back after years of derision and they're extrordinarily successful at blending the aesthetics of big, stupid stadium-rock with electronic distortion.
This is all good. There's nothing I can really complain about there. I love d'n'b as much as the next person who spent a lot of the 90s listening to late-night Radio 1 and I sometimes spend hours listening to 'Hold Your Colour,' the title track from their first album, on repeat. The first album, in fact, is quite a masterpiece, running the full gamut of harshness to prettiness that the genre's capable of with more-than-adequate skill.
Yet there's this bit of me that wants to break out the Crayola and scrawl 'MY FIRST DRUM N BASS RECORD' across the front. Not that it was actually my first or that the band are of no interest to serious drum'n'bass fans but there is an extent to which they've transcended the genre with their success.
Fair enough, lots of acts do that, it's called 'being really good at what you do.' The problem with Pendulum doesn't totally lie here - I'm not anything like enough of an indieist to think mainstream success is a sin.
The problem with Pendulum lies in the fact that, although 'Hold Your Colour' is a terrific album, they appear to be releasing it again. When I first heard 'Propane Nightmares,' I thought it was a return to form after the mess that was 'Blood Sugar' (half-arsery to the nth degree, cut-and-pasting a set of genre cliches together) with that lovely latino start that explodes into the bassy main course, distorted vocals glinting over the top.
Lovely, really lovely. If I'd never heard a Pendulum record before, I'd be sitting here with my jaw on my desk, playing it again and again. Except I HAVE heard a Pendulum record before and I recognise the tricks. There's a lot to be said for continuity with a band; each record definitely still sounding like them but this doesn't just sound like it's made by Pendulum, it sounds like specific bits off 'Hold Your Colour'.
Again, I'm finding myself rather stuck as to how to rate this. It's a five-star song, definitely, even with the hugely annoying brass bit right at the end (and I love the VIP remix) but if you've heard the band before, it's just a reasonably good Pendulum song, no harsher or poppier or more extraordinary than anything on the first record. Dissatisfying, if they do turn out to be a pony with one, albeit very brilliant, trick.
Download: Out now
CD Released: April 28th
(Hazel Robinson)
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