There are plenty of moaners who think Pendulum have “sold out”. Well that’s true, as they sold out their Hordern Pavilion gig with thousands flocking to see the return of one of Australia’s most successful exports.

Do Pendulum have a tendency to overuse some of their synth presets? Yep. Do quite a few of their tracks start to sound the same? Sort of. Did their MC overuse “Sydney” and “New South Wales” in hyping up the crowd? Probably. Did they absolutely tear the roof off the Hordern last Friday? Fuck yeah.

Their last headline Sydney show was at the Metro; the new venue is a testament to their growing popularity and the success of their latest album, Immersion. It was a motley crowd of old and young, with rock-types, the scantily dressed, the under-aged and the oddly-pierced.

Fellow Perth native Shockone had warm-up honours, and was in full-swing as we arrived just after 8pm. And what a fine job he did, delivering the kind of melodic DnB grooves that has put his name on the map. He blended in a sweet dubstep interlude that included a rawkus remix of Florence and The Machine’s Dog Days and the grind of Chase and Status’s Eastern Jam. By 8.45pm everything stopped.

Why it takes 30 minutes to transition from a DJ to a band I do not know. Apparently it is such a difficult process that for those arduous 30 minutes, they even raised the house lights giving people nothing else to do but queue for drinks. And what ridiculous queues! How the Hordern has not discovered how to efficiently serve its patrons after decades in the business is quite baffling. This is alcohol your patrons so desperately crave!

When it did come around, the boys announced their entrance in a big way. The opening horns of Genesis shouted across the audience as a vivid animation of a beating heart emerged behind the stage. It gradually transformed into a metal clad body; the heart into a booming speaker. It was then straight into the maniacal sounds of Salt in the Wounds, and a frenzy of bodies ensued.

Within minutes of the first kick drum, thousands of young boys/men (depending on your perspective) removed their shirts for the ritual intermingling of sweat in timeless activities like the circle pit (for the uninitiated, this is basically where a circle of space is created in the crowd and young men violently collide with each other in some bizarre, comic and slightly pitiful display of faux-manliness). What fun!

As an album tour, there were plenty of cuts from Immersion, with The Vulture being an early highlight that kept the intensity levels at gut-busting levels. Witchcraft was incredibly powerful, and demonstrated just how well Rob Swire’s vocals translate live. A couple of In Silico tracks got a run – Propane Nightmares and Showdown – and there were some favourites from Hold Your Colour, including Fasten Your Seatbelts and Tarantula.

The biggest response of the night was reserved for the encore. Chants of “A-B-C, A-B-C” were heeded and the boys returned to melt heads with their now-iconic reworking of the ABC news theme before leaving a mightily satisfied crowd with an exultantly melodic Watercolour to finish things off. Nice.

Like their last gig at The Metro, in some parts of the room the sound just wasn’t tuned right. With so much bottom end, the clarity and detail was often lost amidst the onslaught of that super-compressed kick drum. And with their music so much about the texture, it was a shame to miss so much of it.

One thing’s for sure: there is no way Pendulum are a DnB act. Probably the two biggest tracks of the night were The Island (both parts) and the ABC remix – both tracks with an unmistakably four-to-the-floor growl. Yet however you want to define them, there is no doubt that Pendulum deliver a knock-out live performance and they left their Sydney audience exhausted and utterly satisfied.