The Prodigy - The Day Is My Enemy

The Prodigy is a band I have a hard time writing about due to the personal affinity I hold for them. As a child the shelf next to my TV held all the secrets of video games, movies and albums my parents had bought before I was even born. I got acquainted with a lot of this music - my mam's love for Boyzone; my dad's interest in cheesy 90s rubbish like No Doubt - but The Prodigy I was always a little too scared of to listen to. They just sounded so... wrong. They weren't among the first wave of electronic music artists but they were there before the whole thing blew up. For a band still grappling with early 90s soundboards and pre-internet technology, their music perfectly captures some of the ugliest things about being human. The Prodigy's violent punk-techno was perfect for the claustrophobic setting of most acid house raves. The change in culture, and broadening of the meaning of electronic music, is maybe why The Prodigy's post 90s output hasn't managed to garner the same love as their older work, although as I say, I've always been inclined to overlook this.

Like everyone who spends too long in the corners of dark rooms taking lethal substances, The Prodigy believed they were the most important band in the world (and hell, maybe for a very brief moment they were). It wasn't long before they had an album titled Music For The Jilted Generation, coming in a case filled with typical us-against-them artwork. This self imposed importance made sense in the 90s; since then, like on Invaders Must Die, the epic feeling of conquering the whole world has felt misplaced: the music was fun and playful now, not epic and trendsetting. The best compliment that can be leveled at The Day Is My Enemy is that for the first time in a long while it sounds like a band who knows exactly who they are. Firstly, they've dropped the illusions of grandeur: the album is far more angry and psycho sounding to, I imagine, ever get play on the radio. Secondly, this is closer to The Prodigy's 90s output than anything they've done since. The argument could be made for them going backwards, although I'd make the bigger argument about needing to know when to turn back.

The sound is unrelenting. It mimics what I imagine a good time at one of The Prodigy's concerts would be like, aka an all out assault on the ears. A track like Roadblox feels like layer after layer of oncoming attack (hence the title, I guess) with the bass never letting up. TDiME sounds like it's telling you to do no good. In interview, Howlett has said the aim for TDiME was to oppose the current trend of formulaic dance music, and on that objective the album is a success: the songs so thrashing that even after a few listens no structure is immediately clear.

The best track on the album is Wild Frontier, which uses loopy sound effects to indulge in The Prodigy's still present interest in extra terrestrial life. All the familiar Prodigy indulgences are here: Howlett's repetitions of the title on Nasty bring to mind the late night scary man on the British streets that Howlett once perfectly encapsulated. TDiME is the band's weakest lyrical effort, although everything adds to the weird mood the band puts in place. TDiME isn't the best album by The Prodigy, and only a handful of tracks stick in the mind, but there's a confidence to this album in feeling like The Prodigy are happy making the sound of music they for a while sounded bored in making - like a respectable gentleman now through a mid life crisis and happily accepting of life. Only The Prodigy are neither respectable or gentlemanly and are all the better for it.