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"Aussie drum and bass stars Pendulum are one of the most unusual success stories of recent years. The group&amp;#039;s Hold Your Colour album went gold in 2005, managing to woo hardcore d&amp;amp;b heads and rocks fans alike. The Perth collective&amp;#039;s musical formula was simple: rack up the BPMs, switch everything up to 11 and throw in a bucket of walloping great beats at every opportunity. For a generation of music fans sick of sappy James Blunt sorts and stylised indie bands, Pendulum&amp;#039;s headache-inducing thrills were a breath of fresh air. Three years down the line and the bar&amp;#039;s been set a little higher for Rob Swire and co. Lead single &amp;#039;Propane Nightmares&amp;#039; gave the group their first top ten hit, but its radio-friendly breakdowns and Spanish trumpets annoyed their hardcore fanbase. The band faced accusations of selling out their d&amp;amp;b roots just to get cosy with Jo Whiley listeners and earn a quick buck. Perhaps more pertinently, Pendulum&amp;#039;s music just didn&amp;#039;t sound like that much fun anymore. In Silico is unlikely to silence the doubters, veering dramatically in quality from track to track. Opener &amp;#039;Showdown&amp;#039;, packed with rocket-powered synths and beats that could bring on a nosebleed, sounds like the greatest video game/action movie theme of all time. A soaring, spiralling mixture of rock, rave and heavy-duty dance, it&amp;#039;s the album&amp;#039;s undoubted high-point. Unfortunately, Pendulum fail to match its arm-flailing mayhem elsewhere. The robotic guitar crunches and swirling electronics of &amp;#039;Different&amp;#039; are so-so, while the fuzzed-up Daft Punk-style vocals of &amp;#039;Visions&amp;#039; can&amp;#039;t rescue the track from plodding mediocrity. Even worse is &amp;#039;The Other Side&amp;#039;, which sounds like the soundtrack to a cheesy romantic scene in a Japanese RPG computer game. These tracks are made all the worse by some truly horrendous lyrics. Sample: &amp;quot;Come on down to the other side, come with us through the gates of hell.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s only when Pendulum return to the sounds and style of their debut that they really hit their stride. The bouncy &amp;#039;Mutiny&amp;#039;, which somehow manages to make drum and bass sound funky, is terrific fun, while the screeching head-rush of &amp;#039;Granite&amp;#039; could probably knock out a small animal. Unfortunately, these giddy larks are kept to a minimum, with closer &amp;#039;The Tempest&amp;#039; pointing towards the Aussie band&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;mature&amp;quot; new direction. At just over seven minutes, it&amp;#039;s the longest track on the album and also the most disappointing. In fact, Pendulum sound more like a US stadium rawk act than the dangerous thrill-seekers of 2005. A truly mixed bag, In Silico has enough quality to surf the sudden wave of interest in hardcore dance - the one that helped German techno boffins Scooter to top the charts this week. Unfortunately, the band&amp;#039;s determination to bring their music to the masses often saturates their sound, making them sound bleedin&amp;#039; ordinary. For a group once considered groundbreaking and radical, this record plays it a little too safe.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/music/album-reviews/review/a96169/pendulum-in-silico/>