Drum and bass-ically pretty boring...

Being a bit slack, I still hadn't had the opportunity to listen to Pedulum's "In Silico" album from start to finish but today, whilst sitting in my sauna hot Swedish turbo barge, I had an hour on the road to kill. So on it went.

The opening tune, "Showdown", is one of the enthusiastic crowd pleasers that tend to dominate their festival sets and yes, I did turn it up to a level that made my speakers teeter on the edge of destruction. But then it all got a bit, well, unexceptional. The problem (if you can call it that) with Pendulum is that their live shows are astonishingly good. Download 2008 saw Pendulum getting more crowd surfing than any other band. They create the kind of buzz that one would expect from hooking a car battery up to damp testicles, and the grinding synth sound is hugely infectious.

However, stick this on a CD and it really doesn't work for me. There's no arguing that singles "Granite" and "Propane Nightmares"are exceptional tunes that do make you want to do that funny-hand-pointy-suck-cheek-in dance like a total cock, but maybe that's just because I've seen them live and was remembering how good these tunes were when looking up at the stage.

In essence, "In Silico" is like having 8 pints of strong continental lager then trying to have sex. You get all psyched up, it starts out great but after a while, it's only operating at about 60% efficiency, starts to get uninspired and lazy, and 45 minutes in you just can't wait for it to finish.

Don't get me wrong, you should absolutely go and see Pendulum live. Just don't bother buying the CDs.