The Prodigy @ The Academy, Sheffield

The Prodigy at O2 Academy Sheffield Review

0/5
Bands: The Prodigy
Venue: O2 Academy Sheffield
Gig: Prodigy @ Carling Academy, Sheffield
Gig date: 11th December 2008
Posted on 6th January 2009 by vlacek

If aliens invaded us now, they would think they had landed in 1996. Noel Gallagher is taking potshots at Damon Albarn, and the Prodigy are playing to packed crowds. Liam Howlett's band of rave-rock nutters never actually split up - they just let their frontman make very disappointing music on his own - but have clearly been busy developing more muscles and tattoos over the past decade. MC Maxim Reality could be a demented, over-zealous foreman: "We're going to take the fuckin' roof down tonight!" Mohicanned rapper Keith Flint, meanwhile, resembles a cross between a rogue Cyberman and Charlie Drake. With Howlett ensconced in a stage set that's part Bladerunner, part Albert Steptoe's scrapyard, it's incredible that such preposterous anarchy on stage can produce such a thrilling, even dangerous racket. The Prodigy haven't changed - they've just turned everything up and added enough new cusses to run up a national debt at the swear box. The new material returns to their mid-90s trademark of making a simple and ostensibly meaningless slogan seem terribly important and threatening. When Reality barks "the writing is on the wall", he isn't talking about graffiti in the toilets. Old era-defining tunes such as Their Law - originally a response to the criminal justice bill - seem timely amid the Greek riots. In fact, none of it seems particularly nostalgic, partly because Pendulum and Justice have robbed the Prodigy's music blind and also because they're attracting audiences often young enough to call Keith Flint dad. When he dons what looks like a Butlins jacket daubed with the words "My dogs will kill you", he looks like a sociopathic redcoat. But when Flint twists his crazed visage into a thrillingly believable, pyromanic Firestarter, it feels as if the venue might literally burn down. Dave Simpson

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