![]() Many of these same cowering children now credit the song as being their gateway to rave music perhaps that explains the fretting mums? It’s captivating, apocalyptic brilliance. An intense, physical performer, he sprints on the spot and hangs menacingly from a spider’s web spitting each line with brash venom. Taking centre stage in the intense visual, ‘Firestarter’ marks Flint’s first track as a vocalist for The Prodigy. Meanwhile The Mail on Sunday ran with the headline “Ban this sick fire record” The video also broke an impressive record: achieving the highest number of complaints ever received by the BBC. Several channels banned the song altogether after concerned parents complained that scary Keith Flint was causing their darling children to cower in fear behind the sofa. Shot in a spooky abandoned London tube station (Aldwych, to be precise) The Prodigy’s video for ‘Firestarter’ terrified thousands watching Top of the Pops in ‘96. As we remember and pay tribute to a true icon of dance culture, these visuals show the group – and Keith himself – in the most fearsome form. The band’s mohawked dancer, frontman, troublemaker and music video menace Keith Flint has sadly passed away at the age of 49. From winding up parents with their provocative antics, to the iconic moment that the group’s Keith Flint terrified impressionable youngsters around the UK during one notorious appearance on Top of the Pops, they’re a band that embody brilliant, unchained chaos everything that dance music should be. It’s rave as family entertainment: good, wholesome fun with just a whiff of cartoon danger, the contented din of a bunch of punks who grew up, got rich, and-like Mick Jagger before them-realized that maybe you can get some satisfaction when your bank balance demands it.The Prodigy have always pushed every boundary going. Ultimately, No Tourists is the sound of a once-inflammatory band happily lodged in its comfort zone, where virtuoso water treading meets industrial-strength customer satisfaction. Industrial hip-hop group Ho99o9 don’t lend anything to "Fight Fire With Fire” that The Prodigy themselves couldn’t have cooked up, while English singer-songwriter Barns Courtney merely waters down Keith Flint’s growl-itself a diluted version of John Lydon’s-on “Give Me a Signal.” In the past some of the band’s more captivating moments have come when they welcomed unexpected guests ( Martina Topley-Bird on 2015’s “The Day Is My Enemy,” Dave Grohl on 2009’s “Run With the Wolves”) but the invitees on No Tourists are too close for comfort. ![]() Yet this fun might have ended up somewhat more profound if the Prodigy had pushed the boat out farther. The Prodigy have long been distinguished by their sugar-rush hooks, and No Tourists has some of their strongest, from the nagging vocal sample on “Need Some1” to the turbo synth line on “Timebomb Zone.” But if No Tourists is effective-those Eastern European festivals will be shook-they’re also having fun with it. The production is so incredibly well crafted-loud and compressed like an aural battering ram-that it leaves the band’s older rave records sounding weedy in comparison. ![]() Elsewhere, the Prodigy spew up their usual mixture of elephantine drum sounds, snarling vocals, and heavy-metal synth riffs, wrapped up in the kind of rave production rush that feels like a garish fairground ride on a cold November night.įor all that, Howlett has denied that the new album is retro, and you can kind of see his point. And so it proves here: the lopsided “Amen” break on “Resonate” is the only sign of the band trying anything different and even that doesn’t last much longer than the song’s first two minutes. Since rejuvenating their sound with an injection of Pendulum’s metallic drum ‘n’ bass rush on 2004’s Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, the Prodigy have been in happy stasis, immune to the musical world outside them. There’s a lengthy YouTube thread under the video for “Light Up the Sky” that tries to trace elements of the song back through the Prodigy catalogue, calling on “Breathe,” “Their Law,” “Voodoo People,” and “The Day Is My Enemy” in the process, while “We Live Forever” sees Howlett sample Ultramagnetic MC’s for at least the fourth time in the Prodigy’s history.Įven when specific noises are more original, a comforting air of familiarity hangs over the album. Listening to No Tourists sometimes feels like a game of sonic whack-a-mole as you try to work out where, in the Prodigy’s long career, you’ve heard that sound before.
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