Review Summary: Restless tides of your shadow, this time you'll know i'm there
It had been over a decade since we've heard anything new from Australian electronic/rock/DnB/Prodigy worship/whatever the hell they want at any particular moment in time outfit
Pendulum. It started when band leaders Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen got sick of producing drum and bass, f**ked off to make trend-core dubstep under the Knife Party moniker, then proceeded to help build the modern EDM scene that every hipster loves to hate today. With EDM being saturated by embarassing gimmicks such as big room house and epic failures of producers such as Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, along with the inexplicable decline of former trance god Tiesto, Swire and McGrillen realized exactly what they had done to their beloved music scene. After pondering to themselves "was it all worth it?", they decided that no, it wasn't worth it. Their hatred of the very scene they helped build up into a mainstream phenomenon led to the two calling up their old bandmates, and lo and behold, Pendulum made their grand return in 2016. After hearing basically nothing from the band except the release of a remix album for almost
five years after the reunion announcement (following so many delays it makes Kanye West's release schedule look good), they've finally come back for us once and for all with
Elemental.
To make it clear right off the bat, Pendulum have done nothing to shake up the formula they've held onto since
In Silico and
Immersion dropped. But to be quite honest, the Pendulum formula is so well done that they honestly don't
need to change up the way things work. The entire point of the band from the beginning was to provide catchy rock-infused electronic music, not to be the last bastions of originality in art. And
Elemental provides some of Swire and McGrillen's catchiest works since Knife Party's
Abandon Ship seven years prior. Aside from the rather mediocre opener "Driver" (which contains a nice drop and nothing else), all of the tracks here serve the purpose described earlier in this review exceptionally well. "Nothing For Free" and "Come Alive" tap more into the band's slower, melodic side, while "Louder Than Words" (a collaboration with fellow DnB act Hybrid Minds) is here to satisfy the cravings of the DnBheads that didn't foolishly jump ship post-
Hold Your Colour. Lyricism is rather standard for a Pendulum affair; nothing downright godawful, but nothing that reaches levels of lyrical genius.
The biggest issue with
Elemental, like virtually all mainstream music releases nowadays, is on the technical side of things; while the production is quite well done for a modern dance release, the curses of hypercompression and godawful mastering have struck once again; any dynamic range that could have been found is squandered by the idiotic engineers that the big bosses insist bands continue to hire for reasons I will never quite understand. If you weren't a fan of Pendulum before, nothing here is going to change your mind about them. If you liked them before, or if you just want some catchy music to jam out to, you'll probably really enjoy
Elemental. They've come alive once again, and at the end of the day we're better off because of it.
