Pendulum
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Pendulum

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“It’s pretty amazing to think that we’re already at the tail end of the Immersion tour,” McGrillen says of the band’s third studio album. “But it’s good to wrap it up back at home in Australia. It definitely still feels like home – I’ve only ever missed one Christmas in Australia, I’m always coming back! Just getting the acceptance and recognition in Australia has been a very difficult thing for us to do – but we know we’re not the only ones. It’s difficult for any band because Australia is a long way away and touring Australia is hard because it’s such a vast landscape. America is the same. It was just sad that at one point we were massive all over the world but we had no influence on our own country. It happens all the time, though, bands will smash the rest of the world first and people back at home will be slow to pick up on them until they hear the news eventually. To finally get that in Australia, and to this degree, that’s been a huge achievement for us.”

Before Pendulum set off on a well-deserved holiday and take some time out to gather ideas for album number four, McGrillen says there’s nothing quite like playing to a home crowd. After all, spending a little time in the Australian sunshine will hopefully serve as some inspiration for the band’s upcoming record too, McGrillen adds.

“That’s the thing with us – even as we were wrapping up our last album [In Silico, 2008], we already had a track written for the next one [ Immersion, 2010]. But before anything happens, we’re definitely having a bit of a break, and I’ve also got my side-project called Knife Party which is music not relevant to Pendulum. I like to look at Knife Party as completely different from Pendulum, and it really is because I’m working with other people on production, so it’s good for me to have that other outlet. I’m still excited about this tour, though, don’t get me wrong – festivals are great because Pendulum really can draw a huge audience but our own shows are a whole different story. We’ve got a massive set and loads of screens and the visual element is heavily tied into the music – it’s actually literally triggered off by the music itself.”

In fact, as McGrillen says, before the entire Immersion cycle comes to a conclusion, Pendulum are releasing one last single off the album, with The Island closing the chapter for 2011. It was certainly an experimental one for a band not quite used to working at a house tempo, but it was a challenge Pendulum were more than ready to tackle.

“That was a bit of a different one for us,” McGrillen admits. “The Island is a track that we did just because we wanted to try something we hadn’t attempted before. It’s basically house music – that’s a tempo Pendulum had never tackled before. We realised that after years of doing this, we believe we now have the creative license to be able to do it! We went for it, and it turned out great, if you ask me. For me personally, though, I love the collaboration we did with In Flames [Self Vs Self] – they’re such an inspiring band! Their music is widely different to ours but we have a lot more common than you’d think! The collaboration worked so seamlessly – they just came in, sat down in the studio, we put the ideas down and the track was wrapped up in one day. That’s the kind of musicians they are, and so are we. We never had a doubt that a track like this could work, but we did try to calculate how much we’d scare the audience away with it!”

Probably the most controversial track on the album, as McGrillen would describe it, would also be his second favourite, Immunize featuring Liam Howlett of Pendulum’s supposed long-time rivals, The Prodigy. After years of both bands believing each had a problem with the other, it all came out in the open at 2009’s Big Day Out, no less, McGrillen recalls. As it turned out, the so-called ‘feud’ between the two bands had been entirely media-fuelled, with neither side really ever having issues with the other. Looking back on it now, McGrillen says discovering the rumours were false was quite a “relief.”

“It’s pretty stupid because for a long time both sides were wrong about each other,” he says. “There’d always been this kind of rivalry and standoffishness backstage between us, and then we found out in the end it was all really based on lies and exaggeration. Both camps would constantly hear all these stories about how much they hated us, or how much we hated them…I think we probably copped more shit, though, because we know journalists were calling us a ‘lesser Prodigy’ and stuff. It took a while for both bands to realise it was all media stirring up bullshit and generating animosity, so we put an end to it after we had a chance to actually hang out with them at the Big Day Out in 2009. We became friends pretty quickly, so yeah, doing a track with Liam was kind of rubbing it in the face of the media, exactly! It’s definitely tongue-in-cheek but it’ll hopefully also just put an end to lies that both of our bands have been putting up with for years.”

Far from a “lesser Prodigy,” to date Pendulum have exceeded a million in record sales around the world, with two platinum albums under their collective belt as the Aussie ex-pats approach the ‘decade’ mark in the New Year. And although they may be one of our biggest breakthrough electronic acts in recent years, you can bet they’re still very much a modest lot, more often than not getting starstruck themselves, as McGrillen sheepishly admits…

“Like at Download [Festival], I was like a school-girl!” he laughs. “That’s an amazing experience just to be able to attend, but to actually be there and be playing next to these incredible bands. To be honest, I was just like walking around in complete in shock the whole day with the people that I was running into and even just watching them play, I was like a kid in a candy store! Korn, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, Motley Crew…What a bizarre experience to just see all these guys in the same place at the same time. The lineup was so good that I just felt so guilty not being able to catch all the bands I wanted to because so many good ones were on at the same time. So yeah, we can draw a pretty big crowd and it’s a very different view from up on that stage, but my perspective on music and my favourite bands hasn’t changed at all. I still definitely see it from where the audience is at and I’m still definitely a music fan who gets nervous or excited about seeing someone I’ve looked up to. I think you could ask the same question of someone who’s been doing this three times longer than us and if they’re a real fan of music, they would probably give you the same answer.”