Invaders Must Die begins with a mangled sample: ‘We are the Prodigy’. It’s helpful; the first track owes so much to Justice’s metal-dance stomping you could be forgiven for making the mistake. But then, arguably, Liam Howlett’s dance collective has been in identity crisis for over a decade, ever since the release of the seminal Fat of the Land in 1997.
Back then, the Prodigy were heroes. Unique in their ability to make listenable the mind-numbingly repetitive music of the underground rave scene, the great British public lapped them up, swooning to their inventive breakbeat and Keith Flint’s horned hair-dos. For a while, every Prodigy release was awaited breathlessly by legions of straight pop fans, pill-heads and the odd impressionable youth, like me.
Leaving teary-eyed nostalgia to one side, it’s hard to say whether this is a good album or not. Howlett’s samples/lyrics are awful certainly, with ‘The world’s on fire/it’s about to expire’ a particular lowlight. But then they were always rubbish, even if Breathe’s ‘Psycho-somatic addict insane’ did sound pretty badass to my twelve-year-old ears.
The real problem with the album is that it’s so obvious that this is a purposeful rehash of Fat of the Land, with the occasional subconscious nod in the direction of Daft Punk and Justice. It all sounds as though Howlett’s bed of money has become a little less fluffy of late, and he’s gone about getting some more in the easiest way possible.
‘Omen’, deemed by the band to be worth a reprise at the end of the album, is a decent stab at re-writing ‘Out of Space’, while ‘Warrior’s Dance’s female vocalist does OK in her attempt to dilute the barrels of nervous testosterone that fuel the rest of the album.
If you think ‘Firestarter’ represents a rebellious call-to-arms to a disillusioned generation Y, buy this album because you will love it. Otherwise, don’t bother. Liam ‘dance visionary’ Howlett should be trying harder than this.
