Prodigy
Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned

THE REVIEW

Here they are again, the Prodigy: 7 years after the success of "The Fat Of The Land," an album that marked the last decade and definitively put an end to any barrier between rock and electronic music, reaching the masses simultaneously.
Those Prodigy were a phenomenon that, although short-lived but of high intensity, made everything that was listened to before seem obsolete, a bit like punk in 1977.
With britpop dead and grunge eclipsed, it was Keith Flint's terrifying face dominating the charts with the pounding sound of big hits like "Firestarter," "Breathe," and the "scandalous" "Smack my bitch up."
But those were the '90s, and since then many things have changed, and so have the Prodigy, lost in solo projects that didn't always succeed and temporarily resurrected for a forgettable single ("Baby's got a temper").
This comeback album is actually a record by Liam Howlett, the "brain" behind the whole project: even in the past, Keith and Maxim were more like frontmen, but in this much-delayed "Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned," their presence, which in any case provided a crucial element for the band's personality, is not felt in any of the 12 tracks. Perhaps Howlett wanted to "refresh" the image of "his" group, but I'm not sure the old fans appreciated the "novelty": the result is that, while the two showmen are absent, guest stars abound instead, from Kool Keith to actress Juliette Lewis, up to Liam Gallagher, Howlett's brother-in-law.

The opening "Spitfire" starts a bit quietly between a powerful vocalization by Lewis, a keyboard sample that closely resembles Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You," and a dry drum that sounds very White Stripes, etc., etc.
"Girls," the most convincing piece of the record and rightly extracted as the first single, shines with its own light. It really rocks. It emanates power, lust, pornography: in a few words, what one should expect from Prodigy's sounds.
The remaining tracks do not always maintain this positive tension, although there are adrenaline peaks, like in "Memphis Belle," a sort of refined garage enriched by sharp percussion and a disorienting sequence of bells.
In "You will be under my wheels," Howlett plays a bit like Fatboy Slim, while the hard "Wake Up Call" is the track closest to previous Prodigy albums, with reminiscences of "Serial Thrilla" and the rock sounds of "Music for the Jilted Generation."
"Medusas Path," with a really curious intro, is a metropolitan tribal dance that never dissipates the tension it accumulates; "Get Up Get Off" aims to raise adrenaline to the max but ends up a bit weak; "The Way It" presents a very fun sample from Michael Jackson's "Thriller," but otherwise, it's certainly not unforgettable.
"Phoenix," on the other hand, is one of the best tracks, the one closest to the traditional definition of a "song," without betraying the band's sound. "Hotride" will be the next single, with good reason: Juliette Lewis's voice is exceptionally catchy, and the track is a perfectly played rock 'n' roll with an overly catchy refrain.
In "Action Radar," there's the scent of the '80s, of Gary Numan, of Devo, perhaps a tribute to Howlett's influences; the album closes with the epic "Shoot Down" featuring Liam Gallagher as a vocalist, fully comfortable in a powerful psychedelic rock almost à la Black Rebel Motorcycle Club where you really wouldn't recognize Prodigy's hand.
An album to listen to with 3-4 great tracks and some others at least interesting and curious: but where are Keith and Maxim?