Music
5 Takeaways from The Prodigy's new album
The rave icons are at the height of their powers once again.
The Prodigy are back! The most iconic rave outfit in electronic music history return with their seventh studio album No Tourists, and it’s a savage return to form. A 10 track punch of pure power, it’s everything you want The Prodigy to sound like in 2018. Here’s why…
1. It’s their best material since Invaders Must Die
Led by the ever-furious rave homage Warriors Dance, The Prodigy’s excellent 2009 album Invaders Must Die re-secured their dominance at the top of festival bills across the world, eventually leading to their last album The Day Is My Enemy three years ago. While it wasn’t a bad album by any means, The Day Is My Enemy was a few tracks too long and perhaps a few collaborations too heavy, and that vigorous ‘fuck you!’ feeling all the best Prodigy albums have just wasn’t quite there. A good Prodigy album should make you feel alive, like you’ve just discovered rave again, that you can’t wait for your next dance. No Tourists does just that.
2. No Tourists taps into The Prodigy’s first three classic albums
There are certain sounds and techniques that belong to The Prodigy. The detuned synths, the rugged heavily textured guitars, those rising riffs that incite feelings of panic, those crisp breakbeat drops. All of these signature traits were established across the three albums that certified The Prodigy’s status as rave Godfathers. And all of those signature traits ooze from every pore right here.
The cascading intensity and urgency of We Live For Ever touches on the No Good sound of Music For A Jilted Generation while its Ultramagnetic MCs sample taps into a tradition that’s been in place since Out Of Space and Smack My Bitch Up. Elsewhere the body-slamming riff, spiky fills and warped melting textures of Light Up The Sky bring to mind The Fat Of The Land. Timebomb Zone is pure Experience-era rave, sirens and all. Boom Boom Tap takes the band’s signature aggression to new levels.
Ho99o9 at the LA studio for Red Bull Radio show Bruh with Awful Records
© Jeremy Deputat/Red Bull Content Pool
3. The Ho99o9 collaboration will blow your mind
While their last album sported hook-ups with the likes of Sleaford Mods, Flux Pavilion and Dope D.O.D, there are only two collaborations on No Tourists – one with UK singer Barns Courtney and the other with New Jersey punk-rap duo Ho99o9.
Coming on strong like an even angrier Run The Jewels, Ho99o9 are clear kindred spirits with Liam, Keith and Maxim and their collaboration on Fire With Fire is proof. A swaggering roller that instantly recalls the brute force of Fat Of The Land, Ho99o9 members theOGM and Yeti Bones’ barbed, throaty anti-authoritarian lyrics complement Keith’s signature punk rasps Liam’s industrial strength beats. If Ho99o9 are new on your radar, check out their last album United States Of Horror, you will not be disappointed.
4. The concept is strong
No Tourists – no chancers, no phonies, no fakers, no bullshit, no laziness.
The band’s main producer and songwriter Liam Howlett has stated that the album is about “escapism and the want and need to be derailed and not to follow that easy set path,” and how “in these times we live in people have become lazier and forgotten how to explore.”
“Too many people are allowing themselves to be force fed, with whatever that may be,” he continues in the press blurb. “It’s about reaching out further to find another alternative route where the danger and excitement may be to feel more alive… not accepting that you can just be a tourist.”
5. For the last few years this album was never meant to happen
“We’re not bothered about writing albums any more,” stated Liam in an NME interview in July 2015. “It just bores the shit out of me. If we can get a couple of EPs written and put them out quickly it’s better for everyone.”
We’re not sure what happened in Liam’s life to make him change his mind. Perhaps this is why No Tourists is only 10 tracks long and hits like a short sharp shock you could fit on one side of a TDK90 cassette? Who knows. All we know is that, after three years of thinking that The Prodigy were done with albums, they’ve just come back with their strongest document this decade.
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