By Jase Walker
They’re finally back and doing a proper tour, it’s Pendulum and I cannot contain how unbelievably excited I am to see them at their own headline show outside of a festival. Not only that but it’s at a venue like 013 which gives me the experience of a large show and production but in a venue that’s just the right size to feel like I’m standing directly in front of the band.
And, AND, I got to chat to Rob from Pendulum prior to the show and got to dig a bit through their history and some takes on the state of the modern music industry and its difficulties. Teenage me would be absolutely screaming right now, I’m truly overwhelmed with how excited I am for tonight’s show now!
Along for the ride on this tour is ALT BLK ERA who I’ve seen floating about but never really got round to giving them a proper check out so here’s hoping for a solid opener! Technically there seems to be an extra preprogram in the form of what appears to be the house DJ, doing a cracking job too.
The band gets themselves on stage and admittedly I wasn’t expecting the maid outfits but the opposed black and white dresses seem pretty damn cool for a live aesthetic! The mix of these outfits and dancing choreography does suggest that these two are big fans of Japanese Gyaru fashion and idol culture in addition to enjoying a mix of metal and race style music.
Little wonder these ended up as support for Pendulum on this tour as while the approach is definitely different, the similar vibe is very much there. I feel like the emergence of the likes of Babymetal and HANABIE amongst many Japanese metal aligned acts probably had a big impact on these two early on and they’ve taken the sort of loud performance style and fused it with some of their own brash punky energy and the end result is a pretty damn fun show to watch. They jump and switch through musical styles pretty often even during the same song, cherry picking elements for great effect, some parts straight up rave, others lean more heavily towards metal with infectious pop hooks.
Artists like ALT BLK ERA are the sort of thing I’m a huge fan of because they’re the type that are brave enough to experiment and smash up styles and then have an ear keen enough to make it work in a coherent way. Admittedly the crowd overall seems a bit indifferent however I can spy a pretty solid group of people closer to the front that are absolutely caught up in their performance and are fully into it, for an opener act that probably very few people here knew prior, I’d call that a pretty solid win.
Great act from these two and while the crowd could have been a bit better I think they won over a solid bunch of news fans.
Just as the room darkens, a massive boom erupts from the stage that shakes my jeans, hair and stomach. The initial monologue shows off the stage production a bit with one of the most active light shows I think I’ve seen since Enter Shikari back in 2022! Opening with ‘Napalm’, the bass continues to shake my body so hard it’s like I’m in a rally car roll cage.
The entire crowd has suddenly been roused from their between band lull and it’s time to… go napalm? Ha ha. Every time I hear ‘Save The Cat’ I love it just that little bit more, the double hit and meow hook was a bit silly at first but it’s becoming such an addictive part of the song, nevermind the absolutely outrageously epic chorus!
Digging back into their older material early on in the set to make sure everyone feels grounded and we’ve got a good mix, it’s time for ‘Propane Nightmare’, the crowd whoops and cheers the moment the signature spaghetti western intro kicks off.
Initially I had a suspicion that the light pillars surrounding the band were moving or whether it was just effective use of light but during ‘Come Alive’ I can actually see them spinning now which admittedly is really weird on the eyes! Rob demands the pit opens up, a huge maw appears in the middle of the crowd and when the drop hits I’m actually astonished how many people immediately slam into each other and the Dutch, being the Dutch, almost drown the band out with chants of “Hey! Hey! Hey!”, insane stuff.
Not wanting to give the audience a second of breath, they immediately follow up with ‘Blood Sugar!’, and now everyone’s screaming the melody too, Tilburg is here to fucking party! By the time we’re on ‘Granite’, the entire front of the crowd all the way to the sound desk is just a sea of one big pit, side to side from both bars, it’s a maelstrom of movement and barely anyone is staying in one spot for long.
Legitimately I really have to say as we move steadily towards the end of the show, this is probably one of the best band and audience interactions I’ve seen in a long time. Even the biggest bands often need to do some level of crowd work to get people properly engaged in the show but Pendulum have barely had to ask for a circle pit at the start of the show and the crowd has been pretty much on party autopilot ever since.
The production that these guys are rolling with is being used incredibly effectively too and while you can’t really see the band themselves much, the flashing lights and the like have been intense but not completely overpowering. But the sound of this show though, I’m pretty sure it’s legitimately the best I’ve ever heard in this venue. The crowd once again opens up for the chiptune start of ‘Self Vs Self’, it begins to spin with the ferocity of a hurricane before collapsing in on itself with even more barely contained fury, incredible scenes.
As we hit the final encore song of ‘Tarantula’ I am more than convinced at this point that this crowd tonight has easily been one of the best crowds I’ve seen at a gig. The Dutch have dance and electronic music in their blood and tonight’s crowd has come along and just had one big fucking party from the first note all the way to the last.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crowd do a moshpit that’s spread so wide it’s actually reached the doors before but I’ve sure as hell seen it now.
- The ÜK leg of the ‘Inertia’ tour kicks off on Satuday (1 November):
