Maxim
Fallen Angel

Five years after the first Hell's Kitchen, Maxim returns with Fallen Angel, the second solo album from the MC of the British band The Prodigy. Compared to the first experiment, this album is decidedly more rock, where guitars are more present in the electronic fabric constituted on a compact wall of synthesizers, and it shows a more pronounced attempt to move from club/dance-electronica towards more black sounds.

It is precisely the guitar of the main riff of 'Nouveau Riche' that introduces us to the work. Sung entirely by Maxim himself (whose filtered voice sounds clearer and less gritty compared to the one known through The Prodigy's records), the song sounds like a sort of 70s glam-rock remixed in an electro-pop style, supported by a hook/chorus and nothing more. The next track 'I Don't Care', more than a decent lead single, returns to territories already extensively explored with the previous Hell's Kitchen, as do the following tracks 'Violator', 'Fallen Angel', and 'Temptation'. All the songs play on the dualism of male (filtered and often distorted)/female (melodic) vocals, a mechanism that quickly tires and leads the listener to use the skip function of the player. 'Trouble Shoota' is the instrumental included in the album, and it is perhaps the most convincing track, with its driving groove and its obsessive repetitiveness. The remaining tracks continue to aim towards hip-hop, but as was already happening with the previous solo work, they seem more like filler to reach a sufficient number of songs to release a full album instead of an EP.

Despite the quality of the production, the content of this Fallen Angel is much more confusing than Hell's Kitchen, and certainly inferior to the latter. What is most noticeably absent is the presence of a compelling lead single like 'Carmen Queasy' was.