Believe it or not, I don’t take any pleasure in slagging bands off. OK, well sometimes I do, especially when a band is spectacularly bad, but generally it’s not fun hearing a band go through the motions when they really shouldn’t be committing their works of art to disc. In short, Pendula are awful. There’s little to no redeeming features about the five songs on this disc, with every single part of the band screaming ‘basic’ or amateurish. The recording is terrible, the drums out of time and (when they’re in time) incredibly basic, and the singing is so incredibly flat I don’t think there’s a genuine note in there.
Before I listened to this disc I read the band’s myspace page and there are a lot of “industry” comments declaring the band as saviours of the universe, with many commenting on their image. And truth be told, I can see why the band are getting such positive remarks as the singer isn’t shabby looking by any stretch of the imagination. But when it comes to looks having to mask the talent of a band, or the lack of it, then you know you;re in trouble. The 5 tracks on this EP show little to no promise at all. The song structures sound like Tomy’s My First Band series, chugging along with no real structure at all. There are no discernable choruses, nothing that sticks out as memorable. The drums plod at the same speed and the vocals are just flat, mid-range and mid-tempo, not once looking to stretch outside of the very limited and safe box she puts herself in.
If Pendula want to make any go of a career as a band they have a lot of hard work to do. Masking their lack of talent as a band behind the image of a singer – there are probably more pictures of her waist on myspace than her face – will not stand them in good stead in the long run. Poor.