Electronic Sound May 2015 (Regular Edition) | Page 16

THE PRODIGY

of old school rave, dub reggae and punk. In many ways, ‘The
Day is My Enemy’ is the angry twin to the ‘Invaders Must
Die’ party. It sounds very much a part of the Prodigy canon, a
logical next step in their story. 
Indeed, the album reveals a clear sonic development. The
tracks are more inherently experimental and that rock edge has
become enveloped into the electronic warfare. Interestingly,
listening to the band’s back catalogue, the only album that
seems out of place now is ‘The Fat Of The Land’. It’s almost
too laboured, as if Liam knew what he was after but couldn’t
quite get there. 
‘The Day is My Enemy’ is that album, the one he was aiming
for back in 1997, a record on which all those opposing sounds
and ideas, the contradictions between the studio producer and
the live band, the conflicts between rock and rave, finally, fully,
come together. A sum of the whole that is significantly more
than its parts. And it’s a bloody angry whole at that.
“It’s not me personally that’s angry, it’s just that’s how I like our
music to be,” he laughs. “I see music as a form of attack, but it
has to attack in the right way. It has to drop into some kind of
dopeness for it to be The Prodigy. I hate manufactured anger. I
didn’t try and make it like that, it’s just what it is.
“It’s like with ‘Invaders’, that had a kind of a party vibe. It
was more old school sounding because I guess it was a sonic
representation of where we were at that time. I guess us
getting back together had a positive vibe. The majority of the
tunes on this album, even the old school ones, have an urgency
about them. They really sum up the band perfectly for me.”
From the fox on the record cover and its connotations of
outsiderness to the way that the production flies in the face
of the contemporary dance music climate of EDM, ‘The Day
Is My Enemy’ is a totally cohesive statement that comes with
an ideology of opposition. The clearest and heaviest assault is
‘Ibiza’, a track that finds Liam collaborating with Sleaford Mods
and pointing the finger at the single-minded hedonism of the
EDM generation.
“People have got lazy,” explains Liam. “It’s all presets on a
synth plugin. This album is us saying, ‘We know what’s going
on and we’ve got something to say’. But it’s not like us saying
that we’re better than anyone, it’s done with a fucking punch
and a wink. Why should we keep quiet? We have to speak our
minds. 
“Thing is, we cannot be put in the same category as those
fucking EMD twats. I need to have a very clear separation so
no one can be confused. We’ve got our own form of electronic
music, we always have done. We’re nothing to do with the EDM
thing because that’s just about going out and partying without

anything else. There’s much more to The Prodigy. I think you
can dive into any of the tracks on this album and go, ‘Yeah,
that’s The Prodigy’, but these EDM divs are all the same. How
long can it keep going? Same old bollocks over and over again.
You can’t tell some of ‘em apart.”
Liam’s frustration at the EDM scene runs deep. To him, it is the
product of a lack of ambition in musical terms. He believes a
lot of EDM producers don’t have the ability to step beyond the
confines of the genre and the limitations of a world of presets
and plug-ins.
“People don’t push it enough,” he continues. “It annoys me
when you know what a new electronic record is going to
sound like before you’ve heard it. It has to be authentic in
the analogue input.