For many people, ‘fat of the land’ represented a landmark achievement as dance music crossed-over into the metal community and, briefly, it seemed that anything was possible with the likes of Fear Factory commissioning remix albums and many more bands indulging dance culture with remixes appearing as b sides. For the Prodigy, however, the album seemed more like a millstone than a milestone and the band retreated following a series of live shows that had more in common with heavy metal stadium gigs than techno (live guitarists / drummers and furious moshpits threatening to destroy the Brixton academy), the Prodigy retreated. With a false start in the form of ‘baby’s got a temper’ doing little more than creating a minor firestorm in the mainstream press over the lyrical content, the Prodigy finally returned with ‘Always outnumbered, never outgunned’, a perplexing rejection of the band’s sonic firepower that sold well but failed to set the world on fire. Whilst live performances remained intense (with a number of the album’s songs aggressively reworked), it seemed the Prodigy had lost their edge. Another fallow period followed only for the band to return with the furious ‘invaders must die’ and suddenly The Prodigy were headlining rock festivals again. With a stunning appearance at 2014’s Sonisphere festival, the Prodigy were clearly back on their game and ‘the day is my enemy’ confirms it. A sullen, punky slab of metal-infused techno, it is the album that should have followed ‘fat of the land’ and it returns the Prodigy to their place at the very top of the heap when it comes to super-charged grimy techno delivered with a sneer and laced with spit.
Cooking Vinyl deserve praise for having produced the album so carefully. There are various versions available, but this review covers the 2LP edition. Housed in a sturdy gatefold jacket, the Ian Wade artwork given plenty of space to breathe alongside a selection of live shots on the inlay, the two LPs are sturdy, beautifully pressed and rendered at 33RPM with only three or four songs per side. It’s a crystal clear pressing with minimal surface noise and the 180gm vinyl feels built to last.
Kicking off side A with the industrial strength ‘the day is my enemy’, the Prodigy haven’t sounded this irresistibly vital since ‘fat of the land. There’s a massive, crunchy wall of sound which was hinted at on ‘invaders must die’ and which is now rendered with blistering clarity. Arguably this is the closest on record The Prodigy have got to their much vaunted live sound and there’s no question that this is a record that will be just as readily loved by the metal community as it will the techno crowd. ‘Nasty’, which many will already be familiar, harks back to ‘jilted generation’ with its punk-infused vocals, sampled guitars and skittering beats recalling the brutal Pendulum reworking of ‘voodoo people’. Maintaining the pace, ‘Rebel radio’ is a full-tilt blast of juddering techno fury fuelled by Keef Flint’s snotty vocals and Maxim’s endlessly terrifying presence. It recalls the devastating live rendition of ‘spitfire’ seen on the ‘their law’ DVD and it highlights the fact that the Prodigy have once again embraced the power of their live show. Featuring a typically foul-mouthed performance from the Sleaford Mods, ‘Ibiza’ is a sleazy slab of electro-punk aggro that takes the spoken-word aspects of Blur’s ‘parklife’ and filters it through the mind of an addict lying in a heroin-strewn bedsit in a broken down estate, making it one of the most menacing tracks you’ll hear all year.
Side B starts with ‘wild frontier’, the first track on the album that allows the beats to breathe without layers of processed guitars. A full-tilt blast, it still pales in comparison to the brutal ‘get your fight on’ which sees Keef and Maxim screaming the refrain over the sort of clattering clusterfuck of a backdrop that only Liam Howlett has ever managed to create without ever leaning too far away from his roots as a dance artist. It’s not all violent outbursts, however, and ‘invisible sun’ with its hypnotic beat and waves of guitar is closer in aspect to Massive Attack’s ‘mezzanine’ than ‘Fat of the land’. It’s a brilliant track and the perfect breather after so relentless an opening gambit. It highlights a newfound maturity in the Prodigy’s song-writing and it also helps to emphasize the searing power of the metallic blasts found elsewhere on the record. Side B closes with the aptly named ‘wall of death’, a grimy blast that seems tailor made for future appearances at the likes of Download and Sonisphere. With its ‘fuck this and fuck that’ refrain echoing the Sex Pistols’ ‘bodies’, it’s a futuristic punk-metal-techno blast that is both gloriously offensive and spectacularly heavy. It is, in short, everything you want form the band that once sang ‘smack my bitch up’!
Side C opens with ‘destroy’, a song that opens with a bizarre 8 bit melody only to turn into the spiritual successor to ‘breathe’ with its gut-punch beat, robotic vocals and heavily distorted synth lines. Next up is ‘rhythm bomb’ featuring Flux Pavillion and it hails all the way back to ‘no good start the dance’ with a similar feel and intent to that genre-moulding classic. With its throbbing beat and cut up vocals, it’s guaranteed to get feet on the dancefloor and it’s good to see that the band have juxtaposed some of the heaviest material of their career with a few pure dance moves to keep the faithful happy. As if to highlight the fact that side C has a dancier feel than the first half of the album, ‘beyond the deathray’ is a short, aural MDMA trip with its squelchy synths and echoing beats rounding out the side in surprisingly ambient fashion.
The final side kicks off with the quirkily titled ‘rok-weiler’, a massive, guitar-fuelled track dedicated to flattening the skulls of the opposition. The beats are hewn from concrete, the guitars set to stun and the snarling vocals of Keef Flint delivered with an intensity that only he can manage. A song that could easily sneak onto Korn’s ‘path of totality’ and not sound out of place, it sees the Prodigy outdoing the metal fraternity when it comes to delivering cutting-edge slabs of guitar infused techno. Rather more old-school is the big beat blast of ‘roadblox’ before the album draws to a close with the swirling eastern-menace of ‘medicine’. It draws a line under the most expansive Prodigy album since fat of the land’ and it shows that this most un-house-tameable of animals still very much has its teeth.
‘The day is my enemy’ feels as if it was written with vinyl in mind. With the first two sides demonstrating the Prodigy at their most aggressive, side C offers a psychedelic trip into the band’s dance roots with material that wouldn’t sound out of place on ‘jilted…’ or even ‘experience’ (‘beyond the deathray’) whilst the final side neatly wraps it all together. This is surely the best the Prodigy have sounded in years and the album perfectly captures the raw, rock-fuelled sound of the Prodigy on stage. There’s not a dull moment here, not a single song that drags its heels or comes across as filler. This is furious, aggressive dance music designed for the dancefloor and the moshpit and the Prodigy have not sounded this dangerous in some time (although ‘take me to the hospital’ came close). The Prodigy haven’t redefined themselves or reinvented the genre with this record – they’ve already done that – rather, ‘the day is my enemy’ sees the Prodigy consolidate their many strengths and deliver and album that sounds almost like a greatest hits. It roams their back catalogue at will, but what most firmly comes across is that the Prodigy have embraced the psychotic intensity that continues to make their live shows such a draw and captures it on a record that rarely lets up. This is the prodigy at their best and I can’t wait for the live shows to follow!
