Big beat/dance/rave/electro masters The Prodigy have stormed to the top of the Official UK album chart with their new studio album, The Day Is My Enemy.
The album, described as "a full-throated return to form" by The Guardian, outsold the competition - including Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran.
The Essex band pushed last week's number one, Chaos and the Calm by James Bay, down to number two.
It is their sixth album to go to number 1 in the UK.
Their previous five albums also went to number 1: Music For The Jilted Generation (1994); The Fat Of The Land (1997); Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (2004); Their Law: The Singles 1990-2005 (2005) and Invaders Must Die (2009).
Album Review
Pitchfork
The Day Is My Enemy cover
The Prodigy are:
Liam Howlett: keyboardist, composer
Keith Flint: dancer, vocals
Maxim: MC, vocals
Never discount the salubrious effects of lowered expectations. Part of the pleasure to be derived from the Prodigy's sixth studio album comes from the fact that there's really no reason, in 2015, for the Prodigy still to exist. A quarter-century, after all, is an awfully long time to try to hold a sneer, but that's precisely what they've been doing since Liam Howlett founded the group in 1990 with a couple of dancers, Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill. While the U.K. raved under the sign of a giant yellow smiley face, the Prodigy adopted a demonic rictus.
That attitude, paired with Howlett's machine-gun breakbeats, mangled cartoon samples, and acid-metal amalgams, repeatedly took the group to the upper reaches of the British pop charts, and it helped them become one of the first British dance acts to break America when they signed a rumored $5 million contract—with Madonna's Maverick label, no less—for their 1997 album The Fat of the Land, a Trojan Horse for "electronica" that also paved the way for a lot of regrettable rap-rock. That record's concussive repercussions can still be felt through all manner of dance music that is loud, aggressive, and in love with its own transgressions: "Skrillex", "Express Yourself", "Turn Down for What", you name it.
But the Prodigy never really seemed to matter in quite the same way again. After a seven-year wait, 2004's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned was a mixed bag of Fat of the Land-style retreads, and, five years after that, Invaders Must Die sounded like still more rendered Fat drippings rescued from the pan—just beefed up to meet the production standards of the then-ascendant dubstep scene. Perhaps The Day Is My Enemy benefits from the fact that, in the past few years, the zeitgeist has moved on yet again—to hip-hop and R&B, on the one hand, and deeper, moodier shades of dance music on the other—which means that the Prodigy sound increasingly like a genre of one.
The title song, which opens the album, is a malevolent high point. The guitar riff rains down like a buzz bomb and the quarter-note ride cymbal sounds like an anvil; Martina Topley-Bird, of all people, sings a trembling couplet borrowed from Cole Porter's "All Through The Night." There's a wild, madcap energy to it—I'm reminded, incongruously enough, of Colourbox's "Hot Doggie" from 4AD's Lonely Is an Eyesore compilation—that carries through the rest of the album's best songs. The double-barreled "Nasty" rockets ahead on a distorted biwa riff, rolling breakbeats, and call-and-response chants courtesy of longtime vocalists Keith Flint and Maxim, while a woozy Theremin melody taps a winking camp sensibility. "Destroy" fuses Belgian rave with skronking baritone sax, while "Rhythm Bomb" cribs the chorus of Jomanda's 1988 diva-house tune "Make My Body Rock (Feel It)".
The best thing on the album, by far, is "Ibiza", a breakbeat fusillade stitched together with rayguns and chintzy Hammond organs; pub philosophers Sleaford Mods spit the withering hook—"Eye-beetha! Eye-beetha!"—and it's such a natural pairing, you wonder why they don't sing on all of the Prodigy's songs. The Prodigy, for all their anger, have never really been about meaning—just see "Smack My Bitch Up", or the equally execrable "Baby's Got a Temper", an ode to Rohypnol—but the Mods' sudsy expositions actually manage to lend a layer of depth to the music, even if it does just entail shouting "Transmit! Transmit! What's he ****ing doing?" over and over.
Elsewhere, the lyrics are as corny as ever. In "Wall of Death", Maxim and Keith Flint shout, "You're not ready to visualize/ I'm not here to be sterilized/ Follow me to the wall of death!" In "Wild Frontier", Maxim warns us that we've got to face our fear in the—yeah, you guessed it—wild frontier. And then there's "Invisible Sun", a ham-fisted attempt to capture Soundgarden levels of grandeur in trap beats, twangy guitars, and straight-up doggerel: "Invisible sun, I'm stumbling in the dark/ Invisible sun, a shadow upon the stars/ Invisible sun, shining where there's no path/ Invisible sun, burning out question marks."
So, yes, there are easily as many misses as hits on the album, and 14 tracks is probably about seven tracks too long. Not to mention that "Get Your Fight On"—lyrics sadly not written by David Rees—samples Pepe Deluxé's "Salami Fever", which the Prodigy already sampled on 2009's "Take Me to the Hospital". Then again, Howlett has been repeating himself in one way or another for some 25 years now; can you blame him for going back to a particularly fertile groove?
The Prodigy: The Day Is My Enemy | Album Reviews | Pitchfork
The album, described as "a full-throated return to form" by The Guardian, outsold the competition - including Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran.
The Essex band pushed last week's number one, Chaos and the Calm by James Bay, down to number two.
It is their sixth album to go to number 1 in the UK.
Their previous five albums also went to number 1: Music For The Jilted Generation (1994); The Fat Of The Land (1997); Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (2004); Their Law: The Singles 1990-2005 (2005) and Invaders Must Die (2009).
Album Review
Pitchfork
The Day Is My Enemy cover
The Prodigy are:
Liam Howlett: keyboardist, composer
Keith Flint: dancer, vocals
Maxim: MC, vocals
Never discount the salubrious effects of lowered expectations. Part of the pleasure to be derived from the Prodigy's sixth studio album comes from the fact that there's really no reason, in 2015, for the Prodigy still to exist. A quarter-century, after all, is an awfully long time to try to hold a sneer, but that's precisely what they've been doing since Liam Howlett founded the group in 1990 with a couple of dancers, Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill. While the U.K. raved under the sign of a giant yellow smiley face, the Prodigy adopted a demonic rictus.
That attitude, paired with Howlett's machine-gun breakbeats, mangled cartoon samples, and acid-metal amalgams, repeatedly took the group to the upper reaches of the British pop charts, and it helped them become one of the first British dance acts to break America when they signed a rumored $5 million contract—with Madonna's Maverick label, no less—for their 1997 album The Fat of the Land, a Trojan Horse for "electronica" that also paved the way for a lot of regrettable rap-rock. That record's concussive repercussions can still be felt through all manner of dance music that is loud, aggressive, and in love with its own transgressions: "Skrillex", "Express Yourself", "Turn Down for What", you name it.
But the Prodigy never really seemed to matter in quite the same way again. After a seven-year wait, 2004's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned was a mixed bag of Fat of the Land-style retreads, and, five years after that, Invaders Must Die sounded like still more rendered Fat drippings rescued from the pan—just beefed up to meet the production standards of the then-ascendant dubstep scene. Perhaps The Day Is My Enemy benefits from the fact that, in the past few years, the zeitgeist has moved on yet again—to hip-hop and R&B, on the one hand, and deeper, moodier shades of dance music on the other—which means that the Prodigy sound increasingly like a genre of one.
The title song, which opens the album, is a malevolent high point. The guitar riff rains down like a buzz bomb and the quarter-note ride cymbal sounds like an anvil; Martina Topley-Bird, of all people, sings a trembling couplet borrowed from Cole Porter's "All Through The Night." There's a wild, madcap energy to it—I'm reminded, incongruously enough, of Colourbox's "Hot Doggie" from 4AD's Lonely Is an Eyesore compilation—that carries through the rest of the album's best songs. The double-barreled "Nasty" rockets ahead on a distorted biwa riff, rolling breakbeats, and call-and-response chants courtesy of longtime vocalists Keith Flint and Maxim, while a woozy Theremin melody taps a winking camp sensibility. "Destroy" fuses Belgian rave with skronking baritone sax, while "Rhythm Bomb" cribs the chorus of Jomanda's 1988 diva-house tune "Make My Body Rock (Feel It)".
The best thing on the album, by far, is "Ibiza", a breakbeat fusillade stitched together with rayguns and chintzy Hammond organs; pub philosophers Sleaford Mods spit the withering hook—"Eye-beetha! Eye-beetha!"—and it's such a natural pairing, you wonder why they don't sing on all of the Prodigy's songs. The Prodigy, for all their anger, have never really been about meaning—just see "Smack My Bitch Up", or the equally execrable "Baby's Got a Temper", an ode to Rohypnol—but the Mods' sudsy expositions actually manage to lend a layer of depth to the music, even if it does just entail shouting "Transmit! Transmit! What's he ****ing doing?" over and over.
Elsewhere, the lyrics are as corny as ever. In "Wall of Death", Maxim and Keith Flint shout, "You're not ready to visualize/ I'm not here to be sterilized/ Follow me to the wall of death!" In "Wild Frontier", Maxim warns us that we've got to face our fear in the—yeah, you guessed it—wild frontier. And then there's "Invisible Sun", a ham-fisted attempt to capture Soundgarden levels of grandeur in trap beats, twangy guitars, and straight-up doggerel: "Invisible sun, I'm stumbling in the dark/ Invisible sun, a shadow upon the stars/ Invisible sun, shining where there's no path/ Invisible sun, burning out question marks."
So, yes, there are easily as many misses as hits on the album, and 14 tracks is probably about seven tracks too long. Not to mention that "Get Your Fight On"—lyrics sadly not written by David Rees—samples Pepe Deluxé's "Salami Fever", which the Prodigy already sampled on 2009's "Take Me to the Hospital". Then again, Howlett has been repeating himself in one way or another for some 25 years now; can you blame him for going back to a particularly fertile groove?
The Prodigy: The Day Is My Enemy | Album Reviews | Pitchfork
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