Pendulum – 7 October 2023 @ John Cain Arena, Melbourne VIC

Some bands play shows.
Pendulum detonate them.

John Cain Arena didn’t feel like a venue so much as a pressure chamber, packed tight and humming long before the lights dropped. You could feel it in the floor, in the air, in the way the crowd shifted restlessly like something was about to break. This wasn’t nostalgia. This wasn’t curiosity. This was a room full of people who knew exactly what was coming and wanted to be flattened by it.

When Driver tore the night open, there was no easing in. Just impact. Sound hitting first, light following half a second later, bodies reacting on instinct. Pendulum didn’t announce their return. They asserted it. Propane Nightmares arrived immediately after, and suddenly the entire arena was airborne, voices shouting lyrics that have lived in muscle memory for over a decade.

From there, it was relentless. Come Alive surged forward, the live drums cutting through the electronics like a weapon. This is where Pendulum separate themselves from everyone else. They don’t just play heavy electronic music. They weaponise it with rock-band ferocity. Every hit landed with purpose. Every build felt earned.

The Blood Sugar into Voodoo People remix was pure chaos. A collision of eras, genres, and energy levels that sent the crowd into absolute disarray. People weren’t dancing anymore. They were reacting. Jumping, yelling, losing control in that uniquely Pendulum way where everything feels just slightly too fast to process.

Guiding Lights and Granite brought melody without losing weight, proving again that Pendulum have always understood balance better than most. Beauty and brutality. Precision and chaos. Colourfast slid in with a sense of tension, followed by Encoder, which felt almost cinematic in scale, the lights stretching high above the crowd like something out of science fiction.

When The Island Part I arrived, the room changed shape. Arms went up. Movement slowed just enough to feel the build before Nothing for Free snapped it straight back into aggression. Halo and Showdown followed with surgical intensity, each drop met with roars that shook the stands.

Then came the run everyone was waiting for.

Witchcraft fulminated.
Self vs Self went for the throat.
Tarantula was pure anarchy.

At this point, the crowd wasn’t watching Pendulum. They were inside the show. Every strobe hit like a flashbulb to the brain. Every bassline rattled bone. This was controlled violence. Joyful destruction. The kind of experience that leaves you breathless and grinning at the same time.

The encore didn’t ease off. The ABC News Theme Remix was unhinged in the best possible way, a moment of collective disbelief that somehow made perfect sense. And then Watercolour. The closer. The release. Thousands of voices screaming the words back, fists in the air, the final surge of energy pouring out of a room that had nothing left to give.

When it ended, it didn’t feel like the lights coming up after a concert. It felt like surviving something.

Pendulum aren’t just one of the biggest electronic acts of all time because of their records. They’re one of the biggest because of nights like this. Because they understand scale. Because they understand impact. Because they know how to turn sound into something physical, something communal, something unforgettable.

This wasn’t a reminder of how good Pendulum used to be.
It was proof they’re still untouchable.

And live, they are a force.