Propane Nightmares is the first singles from Pendulum’s forthcoming second album ‘In Silico’, blending a mix of drum’n’bass, metal, electronica and just about anything else you can imagine, the single provides an amazing insight into what to expect from the Australian rockers this year. By their own admission they’ve spent the last 12 months finalising material for the album and perfecting their live show.

Based on the strength of this single it’s fully justified, imagine Enter Shikari with a touch of humility and less of the over the top “this is what all the kids will go crazy for” repetitiveness and you’ve pretty much got this one down to a tee. The single provides both the radio edit and original version for the song. As any good uplifting musical experience should; it starts off subtly, with an almost Mexican style brass intro, interlaced with the vocals as the ambient starts to build up in the background. Then come the drums and eventually it bursts into a massive electronic orgy, it’s almost as if the first 70 seconds of the track were only to serve as an intro.

There’s just no stopping from here, as everything cascades into what came before, dynamically it can’t be faulted, there’s so much going on with the song all the way through, the original version is 5 minutes 14 seconds, so it’s no surprise it’s been dumbed down for radio. The chorus has an irresistible array of backing vocals which serves to uplift in much the same way as when that original drum’n’bass barrage comes in, which also finds a home after the chorus, it never quite gets old.

All in all the single is a great effort from Pendulum, it certainly acts to whet the whistle in anticipation for the release of their second album, the musical fusion present throughout the song really leaves them standing out from anything else out there at the moment. It’s hard to fault this single in any place, the only real criticism is that it does rely heavily on all the elements which are introduced within the first 2 minutes, put simply it coasts through on the same stuff all the way through. You’ll be hard pushed to find differences between the two versions of the song on the single, only that the one is about a minute longer.

Overall, I’d recommend this and it bodes well for the forthcoming album, definitely worth checking out.