Pendulum,Sub Focus Live Review @ Corn Exchange (Edinburgh) - 20 May 2010

Pendulum

Live Review

On a humid Scottish evening, the jovial Edinburgh crowd were in good spirits, all the way from the 20 minute queue which stretched around the block right until the last song and the mass invasion of Asda at the end. For Pendulum is arguably the most exciting dance band of the moment. With the imminent release of their third album 'Immersion' and a whole raft of festival appearances over the summer, this is probably one of the smaller venues they will be playing on this tour.

Showing a complete lack of regard for crowd safety regulation, the band and in particular Ben Mount, the MC, got the crowd pumped with a mixture of jumping, moshing and even sitting down at one point, which ended up resulting in 3000 sweat-drenched punters. The high octane energy that the band oozed with ease seemed to rub off on the audience, with chants of 'here we, here we, here we f---ing go' being repeated throughout the gig by the crowd and the band, the energy was electric.

Now with three albums worth of material to choose from, the 90 minute set encapsulated all three albums, the usually always muted response to new songs did not happen. The new songs all seemed to go down really well with the crowd, in particular the club-friendly tune 'The Island', which is almost certainly going to be blasted out in clubs the world over during the summer. The other new song that went down extremely well was the Rob Swire sung 'Watercolour', which the crowd went crazy for. The biggest cheers of the night were reserved for the hit 'Propane Nightmares'and from the 'Hold Your Colour' album, 'Slam' and 'Tarantula', which were flawlessly played. Another favourite was the remix of 'Voodoo People' from The Prodigy, which was made over with trademark Pendulum synths set to a high-energy beat, which created the first of many moshpits of the night.

A special mention has to go out to the support act Sub Focus, a dubstep DJ complete with stunning lightshow, which the crowd loved and he did what many warm up acts fail to do, he actually got the crowd warmed up and primed for the onslaught of Pendulum.

All in all it was a very good show, apart from the band sacrificing some crowd favourites like 'The Tempest' and 'Another Planet' to make way for new tracks and the odd middle aged person moaning about youngsters, scantily-clad women and my height. It was a fantastic show with stunning visuals to boot, it also proved what a formidable live band Pendulum have become and how they have cemented themselves as the heirs to The Prodigy's throne.

Lucas Jones