Pendulum 2023/2024 Tour

Gunnersbury Park & The O2 Arena

When is Metal, Rock, When is Rock, Drum & Bass?

Review By Stewart Filbey

This is something that has fascinated me since I was at school.

As I was growing up I have always been interested in live music and concerts. My mum raised me on a diet of The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Roxy Music and Duran Duran to name a few. Watching and listening to live music piqued my interest and the transition from studio to live show and vice versa. When I was at school back in 1996 I was a Grunger if you like Nirvana, Deftones, Machine Head, Korn and Slipknot were the order of the day on the Sony cassette player. I then had the opportunity to see The Prodigy Live in 1998. This was a game-changer! For the first time, I saw live dance music being played by a Punk/Rock band. I saw The Prodigy turn a crowd into for lack of a better word a riot. I had never heard or witnessed something like the energy of their performance the power of what was being projected from the stage and the reaction of the fans and myself being consumed by it all. Since then I have always had an interest in this incredibly powerful fusion of hard dance music and rock.

As I went through school Jungle and Drum & Bass music was on the serge and it came in its many forms in the late 90s I had been circulating in Drum & Bass back streets and had been to many raves by this point. Harder and Darker Drum & Bass music was becoming more common; the likes of Black Sun Empire and Concord Dawn were starting to release some very epic tracks that I felt always had the influences of Metal and Rock music. The more I started to hear this hard dance and rock fusion the more I looked for similar examples. All the while the serge of Drum & Bass in the UK was happening in the early noughties, in 2002 there were reports of a rumbling coming from the southern hemisphere, Western Australia in fact!

I had been introduced to a vinyl called Blood Sugar, this was my personal first introduction to Pendulum. I thought looking back Blood Sugar came first as that is what I heard first, but since doing some homework turns out this may not be the case. To me, this was a record that had in my mind perfectly encapsulated everything big and powerful about both genres of music Rock and Drum & Bass, from that moment I was hooked. Tracks like Slam, Another Planet, Painkiller and Hold Your Colour quickly followed. The Prodigy had released Fat of The Land in 1997 prior so tracks like Breathe, Firestarter and Smack My Bitch Up had been in the commercial limelight for some time. Pendulum then released the debut album Hold Your Colour in 2005 which was pretty much a masterpiece, I do not know a single person growing up at the time or now who does not have a favourite Pendulum track from that debut album. Whether it’s Slam, Tarantula, Hold Your Colour Fasten Your Seatbelts or Painkiller there is something everyone remembers and loves on the album.

I then began to notice other live dance acts Chase and Status, The Freestylers and Faithless just a couple of examples all appearing at festivals and selling out arenas with this full band dance/rock music experience. This leads me full circle to my opening point. This is something that has always been happening. The likes of Depeche Mode, New Order, Duran

Duran have always played live dance music, they have always blended synths and guitars and drums and drum machines.

So for me, Pendulum deserves to be held in extremely high regard as one of the greatest live rock acts touring today. Bringing Drum & Bass music up to a global level of Rock stadium tours and selling out arenas on the level that they have done is jaw-dropping!

When I made the decision to get my qualifications in music production I had focussed my studies on turning dance music into a full live production and I used Pendulum as my example, this was back in 2010. Imagine my joy 14 years later when I write this now having experienced 5 Pendulum gigs since 2014 two of which I have been invited to as a guest and had the privilege to have met the band and have my fanboy moment!

Last year Gunnersbury Park hosted a 1 day spectacular event in which Pendulum and Limp Bizkit were a double headliner!!! (The 19-year-old me just had his mind blown!) I witnessed 2 powerhouses of the early noughties share the stage and put on one of the loudest and most high-energy live experiences I had ever had. Track after Track from Pendulum was an atom bomb of metal, rock & drum & bass only further confirming their place in the high accolades of rock music especially with the introduction of Matt Tuck from Bullet for My Valentine taking to the stage to sing new single Halo. That should convince the most dedicated of rock & metal fans that Pendulum belongs on the biggest rock stages.

Perry using his PRS SE Custom 24 Floyd in solid metallic gold is a rock god, like Thor the lightning blazes from his guitar in one of the best stage effects I have seen in a while, it is something special! PRS Guitars has supplied Perry with a stunning piece that is just as much a presence on the stage as any band member. Rob Swire’s iconic vocals are so familiar now they’re almost comforting to hear all these years later. They fit so well over the apocalyptic performance and can instantly transport me back to 2007. Seeing a crowd on that scale on a warm midsummer afternoon bouncing as one solid mass to Tarantula or The Prodigy’s Voodoo People (Pendulum Remix) is something to behold. The adrenaline and energy that washes over you is down to the performance of the 5 members of Pendulum and from what I can see looking and sound like the current and future legends of rock.

This is again confirmed by this past weekend’s live show at the O2 arena. What a spectacle it was. 20,000 packed into the O2 and you can feel the anticipation and the buzz. The stage is huge, covered in vast LED screens to rival anything at Disney studios. Each band member has their platform to tower over the crowd below. The impression I got was that whatever happens here tonight will be big! I was not wrong! The set list was vast, full of surprises remixes and twists on familiar classics.

The 5 piece band looked like gods and they sounded thunderous. Track by track they ticked off every favourite of past present and future. Kicking off with a brand new song Napalm, it was exactly like as it is titled, a devastating wall of sound. Quickly followed by Crush and loved by many Propane Nightmares and Come Alive. Then the first personal highlight of the night for me was a mind-blowing remix of Blood Sugar, Voodoo People and Baddadan it rumbles through the arena sparking a frenzy and mosh pit front and centre.

Other notable tracks from the mid-set include The Island, Colourfast and Encoder which did not let up on the pace or energy at all, leaving no room to breathe for the fans. Every track comes like a bolt from above.

Then came the 2nd highlight! Rou Reynolds from Enter Shikari takes to the stage to blast his voice to the rafters with “Sorry You’re Not a Winner” Pendulum Remix…. It was as beautiful as a moment as you can get in a metal/Drum & Bass packed arena to the sound of 20,000 singing along! All the more confirming their place rubbing shoulders with the most exciting rock bands of all time All of this excitement was closely followed by Halo (without Matt this time) the set continued up to the dizzy heights of Witchcraft, Self vs Self, the almighty Tarantula which turned the venue upside down! And then to see out the night with Watercolour and The Tempest.

When the noise stopped and the lights went out everyone was left gasping for breath and sweaty like every single person had been on the ride of their lives, everyone had worked in the arena to fill it with the energy and adrenaline which has finally exploded in the volcanic burst of the performance of the band. Just like that it was calm and the thunderous clouds parted and we all began to leave. New Pendulum merch in hand much to my wife’s delight we set off for the after-party to see out the night with the band thank them and collect other fanboy memories.

I hope that in the distant future, Pendulum will still be considered one of the legends or pioneers of rock and in another 40 years’ time when I am rattling around at home zooming up and down on my stair lift, The grand children will be over and in the background Absolute classic 00s or some variant of a Classic Rock station will be playing and Ill hear that introduction to Tarantula start and ill say to them “turn it up a bit, this is one of mine and your Nan’s favourites!”