It’s been five long years between shows in Brisbane for UK based, Australian drum and bass band Pendulum. But after a slew of new releases and hype, Pendulum are finally back in Brisbane for the last night of their Australian tour, hyping up the release of their new EP anima. And they’ve brought along their long time friend, ShockOne for the ride.
Opening the show with a DJ set from ShockOne was probably the smartest move Pendulum could have made for this tour. I’ve been a massive ShockOne fan for the better part of the last decade, and have caught him live a few times. But the energy he brought this show straight out of the gate, continued to escalate through his set and peaked over so that when Pendulum was scheduled to take to the stage, the crowd was primed and ready for it. And ShockOne had some great tunes mixed throughout the set, including drum and bass remixes of songs like ‘No Problem’ by Chase & Status, and Breathe by The Prodigy, fused with some of his own material like ‘Dying Light’ and ‘Ready to Go’. It was an interesting way to hear his music, that gave a lot of his material new life.
After about a half an hour of waiting, the lights went down by the Brisbane River, as a low hum came over the speakers of the Riverstage. Like an exploding force, the Aussie Drum and Bass contingent ran out and blew through an impressive mix of old and new for the first two thirds of their set. Opening the show with 2021’s Driver, which was one of the two songs that re established the band back on the music front, the show bobbed and weaved between songs like ‘Propane Nightmares’, ‘Come Alive’, and ‘Blood Sugar’.
Next song up was a newer one I had not heard before, called ‘Guiding Lights’. While introducing the song, lead singer Rob Swire described it with such colouful language, I probably shouldn’t repeat it here. But needless to say, if you’re looking for a song about someone you thought was a friend, this is the song for you. The middle of the set gave us another song off In Silico, in ‘Granite’, before launching into their latest single, ‘Colourfast’. I must say that out of all of Pendulum’s post-2021 music that has been released, ‘Colourfast’ hadn’t really connected with me before the show. But seeing it live, it’s taken a new dimension sonically that now, I absolutely love it.
It was at this point of the set, I felt the vibe start to change. We were seven songs into the show, and we hadn’t had a single song off 2010’s Immersion. While I had been a Pendulum fan before Immersion, Immersion is arguably the bands peak for me. So being a fair wack into the set, it had surprised me nothing had come yet. But I was naive, because they went back to back to back with Immersion material, in Encoder (Rob cited this was the first time they’ve played it on tour in 13 years), The Island Pt I, and a newer, updated version of The Island Pt II. There was not hard electro break down, but it felt like it was a pretty good update on the older version of the song. The followed The Island up with Nothing For Free, which next to Driver, was the other big return song for the band.
After talking for a little bit about how they’d recently been listening to a lot of metal, we got a live version of ‘Halo’, featuring Matt Tuck from Bullet for My Valentine. Matt’s vocals were layered over the live performance, but the synchronicity between the tracking and the performance were dead on. I hope these guys can get together on a stage and perform this once, because it goes off live.
Pendulum then closed the show out strong, with the last four songs of the main set being ‘Showdown’, ‘Witchcraft’, ‘Self vs Self’, and ‘Tarantula’ all back to back. Like I said earlier, being such a fan of Immersion, and being such a fan more specifically of the Swedish Metal band In Flames, I never thought I’d see ‘Self vs Self’ live. But holy hell this moment was special. The entire crowd, who had been going nuts for the last 2+ hours for drum and bass, were going ballistic for a metal song. It was so cool to see weird moments of people moshing and dancing like it was an EDM festival.
After a short time off stage, Pendulum returned onto stage, and they started gearing up for another song I never thought I would hear live. For context, this was a Pendulum song that for years was my alarm tone on my phone. Every time I hear it, I associate it with waking up and going to work, that’s how ingrained it was in my morning routine. It was the ABC News Theme remix. Listening to the entire crowd sing the melody for ABC news was one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen at a gig, to the point I couldn’t stop laughing that it was happening. After a final goodbye and thanks from Rob and the band, Pendulum closed the show out on probably their biggest hit in Australia, ‘Watercolour’. The entire crowd was singing the melody to this as well, almost begging Pendulum not to go, because Brisbane still had a lot in the tank. After a final bow, the show ended, to a massive ovation, and a hope from a lot in attendance that the boys don’t leave it another five years for a national tour.
