The guitar-heavy In Silico was victim to the dreaded “second album syndrome”, the band was suffering from an “identity crisis” while in the studio and for their next release, they’ll be ditching the rock and heading back to their dance music roots. All these revelations and more were dropped by Pendulum in a recent interview with UK music site Data Transmission, which saw the band spilling the beans on recording their last album, as well as the decidedly more electronic approach they’ve got planned for effort #3.

“We struggled,” founding member Gareth McGrillen told Data Transmission, on the subject of In Silico. “Both Rob and I promised ourselves at the start that we wouldn’t get ‘second album syndrome’, but we got it BAD. People would often think, oh it’s cause they’re on a major record label, that’s why it’s taking so long – but we didn’t really have much outside pressure, it was mostly pressure we put on ourselves, I guess cause we had a bit of an identity crisis wrapped up in a nervous breakdown. That just perpetuated things and so it took even longer.”

Gareth said the band are hugely excited to be returning to a more electronic focus on their upcoming new album. They’ll be dropping sneak peaks in Pendulum DJ sets over the next year, and they say they’re also keen to explore some new sonic territory. “We’ve been bang into dubstep from the beginning. We’ve produced quite a bit of it, but it’s only really come out in DJ sets and stuff…so we’re definitely keen to have some of those kind of tempos. We love exploring different tempos.”

The words make for honest revelations from Pendulum, and are in contrast to the sharp response the band gave the drum n’ bass purists last year, many who were less than impressed with the new direction of In Silico. “If there’s a person on the internet who’s a drum n’ bass purist who hasn’t cussed us out in the last 12 months I’d be amazed.” the band told ITM last year. “To be honest we don’t really care, we didn’t really make music for the purists to begin with, and we’re not really interested in pandering to a scene.”

While the drum n’ bass community might have had a few things to say about In Silico, the response from the heavy metal scene on the other hand was rapturous, and saw the band embraced by heavy rock magazines s like Kerrang! and eventually playing to enthused crowds at the mainstage at this year’s Big Day Out tour.

Pendulum will be headlining the UK’s Global Gathering next month alongside Prodigy and Orbital. Stay tuned for more info on their upcoming album!