Ah, I remember my pill-popping days of old; raving into the night at Homelands and Creamfields with my chin sticking out a metre in front of me, dancing into a sweaty, frothy frenzy and telling everyone profound, chemical-induced thoughts on life and activism. I loved every minute of it. I have been taken back there over the last couple of days. The Prodigy’s new album Invaders Must Die is responsible.
This is simply vintage stuff. The Prodigy have made a welcome return to the 90s pill-popping rave scene and chucked a few genre-splitting riffs into the melting pot for good measure. They may have been at their peak of fame when The Fat of the Land was released, but they are on the crest of something far bigger here; something that mixes the current urban punk culture with a burning spark of the old skool rave generation. The two collide and make a black hole. That black hole is this record. People with Isle of Wight Festival tickets are in for a treat!
Liam Howlett describes the opening title track Invaders Must Die: ‘The first tune on any Prodigy album has to be got to be something that just tears and smacks you round the head really. Spitfire was like that on the last album, Smack My Bitch Up on the one before. This does it in a different way. It’s a very abrasive sounding electronic track, kind of different to anything we’ve done before.
‘I wrote the riff about a year ago on my laptop when I was on a plane. It sounds like the kind of thing I would have written in 1992, it sort of has that rave melodic feel with a tearing track underneath. I had the track 80% there and hooked up with James from Does it Offend You Yeah and he pulled a few sounds out of the bag and helped put it together. It’s one of my favourite tunes on the album.’
Yes, the rumours are true; Dave Grohl features on the track Run With the Wolves, but until now very few people know how such an unlikely relationship was formed:
Keith: ‘It all started with an email to Liam saying ‘Listen man, I’ve finished touring and I’m bang up for doing something. Liam said he was just finishing the album but Dave said listen, I’m just going to go in the studio and put down some drums, which he did. A hard drive arrived at our studio and out of that came the process of writing this. We had the vocal on another track already but they just weren’t working. They had too much venom for the track. But we still enjoyed the excitement of it and what it was saying and this was the ideal opportunity to make it work. Liam re-did the track, then we re-did the vocals and we sent it over to Dave who was like ‘Yeah I was really hoping it was going to be something like this.’ He was really excited and worked some more on it.’
Liam: ‘I think you were angry the day you wrote this weren’t you?’
Keith: ‘Yeah I was’
Liam: ‘Yeah it was definitely written about a certain someone, we don’t know who it is but Keith does.’
Maxim: ‘Was it about me?’
Liam: ‘Nah, don’t get para. Hah, when I listen to this tune I just want to smash my head against the wall. It kind of like when the riff drops in its, just violent you know?’
Some of the tracks on Invaders are less aggressive and even verge on the anthemic; Omen is the melodic, lovechild of Breathe from TFOTL. With a classic vocal hook, this track is somewhat less intimidating than the sinister sister track Omen Reprise which is,according to Liam, ‘An orchestrated version of Omen but it really reminds me of the music from Scarface. It’s got this 80s Vangelis sound.’ And ‘like a dark Bladerunner’ according to Keith.
It’s great to see these guys back on form and hungry to start the machine again, and they certainly have a few tricks up their sleeve to keep you on the ropes for the duration.
Piranha is a personal favourite. With its 60s garage-meshed-with-old-skool-rave vibe, its urban punk at its absolute best, and Liam likes it too. ‘Piranha is a metaphor for something living off of you, you know, chewing off you. That was the concept of the track. We wanted to have 1960s B-movies vibe to it.’
Maxim made a big move forward with his vocals on this track, ‘For me it was a chance to do different vocal ideas rather than the monotone rap. I tried injected more melody into the vocals. This track, like the rest of my vocals on the album is a real step up for me.’
Already fan favourites, World’s on Fire and final track Stand Up prove this album is not front-heavy. These tracks have a quality that is reminiscent of previous albums, yet they carry a sheen of new hooks and synthetic riffs that bring them to the forefront of where The Prodigy are now; on top of their game. Liam explains: ‘This is the real wild card on the album. I think people will go ‘is that the Prodigy or isn’t it?’ but its got this real victorious feel. It’s a tune I really love and it’s like being wrapped up in a warm blanket before you fuck off home.’
Someone asked me recently if the record sounded big. It’s fucking colossal!! Its like an interstellar war between punk rock, rave, drum’n'bass and breakcore. These electropunk beats batter your skull and shudder through your spine until you are begging to be let go, only to be left with a tremor for days. The Prodigy’s knack for a thousand yard stare will have droves of gurners travelling the miles just to catch a glimpse of a punk band back to their best. They have successfully given the media and mass pop culture a big crooked middle finger. As Liam describes the album title, its clear to see that The Prodigy aren’t quite ready to make their final stand just yet…
‘People were starting to infiltrate our unit, starting to bleed into what we were and we needed to re-establish ourselves as a unit. I can’t remember whether it was Keith or Maxim that said it, but one of them went, ‘fuck it, invaders must die!’. I was like that’s the album title right there. It stayed with us. It’s about protecting what’s yours.’
Well, they have certainly done that. The only way to describe Invaders is contorted electronic genius. The g-word word gets thrown around willy-nilly these days, but I’ll be frank; this album takes you to the edge of an oily, metallic, cliff of bones and sinew, holds you over by your ankle and lets go with a big grin on its face. It absolutely murders your senses and hits you hard right in the keister. It’s a head-shaking mesh of destruction and flag-waving madness.
Phew, I’m glad that part is over, but for all you future listeners and ex-ravers, the writing is most certainly on the wall.
No comments:
Post a Comment