Review Summary: Diesel Power against the mainstream
Recently, mainstream dance music has become a very one-dimensional genre. EDM basically runs off of “BIG SUMMER CH00NS” to soundtrack your MDMA-riddled treks through the mud at Creamfields, and even the entertaining revival of UK garage/house in the charts of late has quickly become infected with electronic ennui. If there’s one thing that The Prodigy can do, it’s standing up against bullsh*t. Liam Howlett described
The Day Is My Enemy as fighting back against “all that DJ bollocks and tutorials on YouTube sh*t”. The Prodigy have very much become the Slayer of dance music, bringing their breakbeat aggression to rock festivals all over Europe. Indeed, it’s when The Prodigy are at their most “metal” that
The Day Is My Enemy is at its peak.
One only has to look so far as the song titles to realise that this is The Prodigy’s most violent-sounding record yet. Powerful bursts of electro beats blend nicely with bombastic drumming, hard guitars and energetic, punk-style vocals on tracks like “Destroy” and “Rok-Weiler”. Dubstep titan Flux Pavilion is also brought in to help with the thick basslines on “Rhythm Bomb” to punishing effect. The LP is a sonically brutal ride from start to finish, managing to hold itself over the hour-long run time, and The Prodigy have successfully separated themselves from the rest of the dance music pack by carving out a sound that is distinctively their own.
However, the record falters when the group just don’t manage to hit the balance between the rock and dance music influences. Lead single “Nasty” comes off as a B-Side from
Invaders Must Die and sounds deceptively similar to “Omen”, and “Wild Frontier” is a slightly lazy, Pendulum-lite drum and bass song. Similarly, bonus track “Rise of the Eagles” relies too heavily on its guitar hook without the beats to back it up, and “Wall of Death” feels like it’s over before it ever really begins. Because the group can be so good at grabbing the listener’s attention, it also makes filler tracks like “Rebel Radio” particularly grating.
In the 90’s, The Prodigy went to war with the mainstream. They played illegal raves, had albums banned from supermarkets and snarled at the thought that they weren’t allowed to play “Smack My Bitch Up”. Twenty years on, that energy, long dormant on their later efforts, has finally resurfaced on
The Day Is My Enemy, its sights set once again on the “kiddie rave” scene that is EDM. Whether they’ll win or not is a mystery at this point; the album is a cohesive and aggressive unit but lacks a certain addictiveness compared to their other material. One thing is for certain though; The Prodigy is very much alive and kicking.
