THE DUKE ON
ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, NEVER OUTGUNNED
BY THE PRODIGY
ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, NEVER OUTGUNNED
BY THE PRODIGY
1996, the year when the last Prodigy record was released, is a
long time ago, is what The Duke has worked out. I mean, I don’t
have a calculator or a flo-chart on me, so I’m gonna have to make
a rough guess, but I’d imagine its about three or four decades ago.
It’s a hell of a long time. Folks have moved on, is what.
In 1996, for example, all those aeons ago, The Prodigy were among
the biggest bands in the world. Word-of-mouth concerning their
live performances had seen a whole new audience latch on to their
songs about Voodoo People and Fuck Em, And Their Law, an army of
folks who listened to Machine Head and Sepultura, folks who would
normally puke a lung up at the sight of a remix, these folks were
lining up to see this band what utilised the keyboards,
synthesisers, scratching etc.
As far as establishing a connection between rock fans and dance
fans, The Prodigy are among the most influential sons a bitches
you ever did see. It was ok to have Metallica and The Chemical
Brothers in the same CD collection, all of a damn sudden. Folks
were looking beyond the general representation of the DJ as a
faceless programmer sitting behind a mile-high stack of computer
equipment, flinging bleeps and blips and all manner of screeching
annoyances into the air above a bunch of E-riddled adolescents.
Firestarter was a dance record, and yet it was as exhilarating and
venomous as anything the long-hairs released in the same year.
Shit, man, it rocked so hard even Gene Simmons saw fit to do a
cover version.
I ain’t heard Gene Simmons do a cover of Ebenezer Goode yet,
although, to be honest, I think I’d pay in essential organs for to
hear such a recording.
After they released The Fat Of The Land, the record what had a
crab on the cover and held two of the best singles of the
nineties, the aforementioned Firestarter and the snarling Breathe,
as well as the ever-controversial I Want To Smack You, You Bitch
or whatever it was called, The Prodigy decided to put their feet
up and do other stuff, like smoke a cigarette, have some sherry,
see a film, form a Godawful nu-metal band.
But now, Liam Howlett, the musical brains behind those songs about
You’re No Good For Me and so on, he's decided it’s time to get
back in the ring, put the gloves on and then fumble about with the
samplers for a while.
In September of this year, the first Prodigy album since Fat Of
The Land will hit the stores, and thank God and his various
advocates that The Duke has got to hear it, and can tell you if
its any good or not.
Let me tell you something right now; I thought The Fat Of The Land
was a brilliant EP surrounded by a world of utter crud. It was
embarrassing, is what, saddled down by clichéd, cringe-inducing
“metal” posturing. I mean, the reason rock-music fans liked The
Prodigy in the first place was because they were making dance
music and yet blowing the fuck off any venue they entered. We know
you rock, man, you don’t need to turn into a shit rock-band to
illustrate the point.
Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, alas, is just as clichéd,
just as dated, and just as damn-well embarrassing.
The dance elements don’t come anywhere close to sounding as fresh
as 1992’s Music For The Jilted Generation. The rock elements sound
like mid-90’s sub-Deftones dirges. The inspiration, the
originality on display in Howlett’s previous fidgetings, all that
is scarcely on evidence here.
Album opener Spitfire features a vocal from Juliet Lewis, and
serves as a suitably energetic track 1, side 1. It has a touch of
promise about it; enough, in fact, to convince you that this
Howlett cat has gone ahead and made something earth shattering,
but no, he’s just got the same tricks he ever had, and those
tricks just aren’t as impressive anymore.
Who wants to see a guy cut a rope in half and then, oh, the rope’s
back together again, in this day and age? We see Derren Brown play
Russian Roulette and David Blaine sit in a box. We don’t need no
lame turn-of-the-century party pieces.
Same applies here. The Streets and Outkast have gone a fair old
way in revolutionising dance music, to such an extent that a few
chords smashed on a guitar and a couple of bleeps over the top
just don’t cut it no more.
The Streets A Grand Don’t Come For Free sounds vital,
groundbreaking, demanding of our attention. This here sounds
nothing but lazy, and in no way justifies either the time it took
to create, or the hype being lavished upon it.
In fact, I’m guessing this maybe didn’t take so long to create at
all. I’d go as far as to suggest an analogy of sorts with the kid
who spends all summer fucking around and then does three months
worth of homework at 9 o’clock on the night before school starts.
I’m guessing Howlett has spent the last forever fucking around in
such a fashion, and flung this together in a week using Dance E-
Jay.
Lazy, man, Lazy, lazy, lazy.
And he himself admits as much in any yackings he’s done about
Always Outnumbered…
When asked about the track You’ll Be Under My Wheels whilst
providing a track-by-track run-down for Q Magazine, Howlett is
quoted as saying “Not a lot to say on this… It's just an album
filler.”
Just album filler? Well guess what, man, I know you been living
the high-life and what not, but in the real world there’s this
thing called, I believe, The Satanic Practices Of File-Sharing,
what has convinced a hell of a lot of performers to up the game a
jot, since consumers just aren’t too keen on forking out 15 quid
for stuff comprised of “album filler”. There’s four tracks here
that are worth hearing. Four MP3’s can be downloaded in, what,
twenty minutes on a 56k modem?
Haven’t you heard of B-Sides? Haven’t you heard of motherfucking
25th Anniversary Editions? That’s where shit like that belongs,
not on an incredibly high-profile release such as this right here.
Not on something folks have waited for since Clinton was president.
Always Outnumbered is, at best, interesting, mildly amusing. At
worst, it sounds like a novelty record. The Way It Is samples
Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Phoenix is plain and simply a remix of
Shocking Blue’s Love Buzz, a track covered with much more
enthusiasm by Nirvana on their debut. Shoot Down, the last track,
has Liam Gallagher delivering a hook-less vocal line and bass-
slappings from brother Noel.
These tracks at least hold the attention, if only to see what
Howlett has done with the raw material. In most cases though, it’s
that he’s flung a distorted drum beat over the top.
Wake Up Call is the best thing on here, with the two tracks
featuring Juliet Lewis coming joint second. It’s a driving, hip-
hop inflected number, a truly arresting slab of aural mayhem what
makes you pine for the kind of record this could have been, man.
The first single is reportedly Girls, an utterly awful attempt to
jump on the long-pissed off Old Skool Rap bandwagon. That
bandwagon’s gone, man. Look. You see it? No, you don’t, because it
fucked the hell off ages ago.
At times Always Outnumbered recalls Jilted Generation, with Voodoo
People being heavily referenced on a number of occasions. Sadly,
the rest of the time it sounds like a bunch of shit left off the
other records, and for good reason, man.
Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned they say. Well, guess what The
Prodigy? I don’t hear anyone else needing to boast about the
firepower so much. They just go ahead and release brilliant music.
Maybe you should grab a couple more AK’s, The Prodigy, cause
you're gonna need a bullet or two extra if this is the crux of
your defense.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
long time ago, is what The Duke has worked out. I mean, I don’t
have a calculator or a flo-chart on me, so I’m gonna have to make
a rough guess, but I’d imagine its about three or four decades ago.
It’s a hell of a long time. Folks have moved on, is what.
In 1996, for example, all those aeons ago, The Prodigy were among
the biggest bands in the world. Word-of-mouth concerning their
live performances had seen a whole new audience latch on to their
songs about Voodoo People and Fuck Em, And Their Law, an army of
folks who listened to Machine Head and Sepultura, folks who would
normally puke a lung up at the sight of a remix, these folks were
lining up to see this band what utilised the keyboards,
synthesisers, scratching etc.
As far as establishing a connection between rock fans and dance
fans, The Prodigy are among the most influential sons a bitches
you ever did see. It was ok to have Metallica and The Chemical
Brothers in the same CD collection, all of a damn sudden. Folks
were looking beyond the general representation of the DJ as a
faceless programmer sitting behind a mile-high stack of computer
equipment, flinging bleeps and blips and all manner of screeching
annoyances into the air above a bunch of E-riddled adolescents.
Firestarter was a dance record, and yet it was as exhilarating and
venomous as anything the long-hairs released in the same year.
Shit, man, it rocked so hard even Gene Simmons saw fit to do a
cover version.
I ain’t heard Gene Simmons do a cover of Ebenezer Goode yet,
although, to be honest, I think I’d pay in essential organs for to
hear such a recording.
After they released The Fat Of The Land, the record what had a
crab on the cover and held two of the best singles of the
nineties, the aforementioned Firestarter and the snarling Breathe,
as well as the ever-controversial I Want To Smack You, You Bitch
or whatever it was called, The Prodigy decided to put their feet
up and do other stuff, like smoke a cigarette, have some sherry,
see a film, form a Godawful nu-metal band.
But now, Liam Howlett, the musical brains behind those songs about
You’re No Good For Me and so on, he's decided it’s time to get
back in the ring, put the gloves on and then fumble about with the
samplers for a while.
In September of this year, the first Prodigy album since Fat Of
The Land will hit the stores, and thank God and his various
advocates that The Duke has got to hear it, and can tell you if
its any good or not.
Let me tell you something right now; I thought The Fat Of The Land
was a brilliant EP surrounded by a world of utter crud. It was
embarrassing, is what, saddled down by clichéd, cringe-inducing
“metal” posturing. I mean, the reason rock-music fans liked The
Prodigy in the first place was because they were making dance
music and yet blowing the fuck off any venue they entered. We know
you rock, man, you don’t need to turn into a shit rock-band to
illustrate the point.
Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, alas, is just as clichéd,
just as dated, and just as damn-well embarrassing.
The dance elements don’t come anywhere close to sounding as fresh
as 1992’s Music For The Jilted Generation. The rock elements sound
like mid-90’s sub-Deftones dirges. The inspiration, the
originality on display in Howlett’s previous fidgetings, all that
is scarcely on evidence here.
Album opener Spitfire features a vocal from Juliet Lewis, and
serves as a suitably energetic track 1, side 1. It has a touch of
promise about it; enough, in fact, to convince you that this
Howlett cat has gone ahead and made something earth shattering,
but no, he’s just got the same tricks he ever had, and those
tricks just aren’t as impressive anymore.
Who wants to see a guy cut a rope in half and then, oh, the rope’s
back together again, in this day and age? We see Derren Brown play
Russian Roulette and David Blaine sit in a box. We don’t need no
lame turn-of-the-century party pieces.
Same applies here. The Streets and Outkast have gone a fair old
way in revolutionising dance music, to such an extent that a few
chords smashed on a guitar and a couple of bleeps over the top
just don’t cut it no more.
The Streets A Grand Don’t Come For Free sounds vital,
groundbreaking, demanding of our attention. This here sounds
nothing but lazy, and in no way justifies either the time it took
to create, or the hype being lavished upon it.
In fact, I’m guessing this maybe didn’t take so long to create at
all. I’d go as far as to suggest an analogy of sorts with the kid
who spends all summer fucking around and then does three months
worth of homework at 9 o’clock on the night before school starts.
I’m guessing Howlett has spent the last forever fucking around in
such a fashion, and flung this together in a week using Dance E-
Jay.
Lazy, man, Lazy, lazy, lazy.
And he himself admits as much in any yackings he’s done about
Always Outnumbered…
When asked about the track You’ll Be Under My Wheels whilst
providing a track-by-track run-down for Q Magazine, Howlett is
quoted as saying “Not a lot to say on this… It's just an album
filler.”
Just album filler? Well guess what, man, I know you been living
the high-life and what not, but in the real world there’s this
thing called, I believe, The Satanic Practices Of File-Sharing,
what has convinced a hell of a lot of performers to up the game a
jot, since consumers just aren’t too keen on forking out 15 quid
for stuff comprised of “album filler”. There’s four tracks here
that are worth hearing. Four MP3’s can be downloaded in, what,
twenty minutes on a 56k modem?
Haven’t you heard of B-Sides? Haven’t you heard of motherfucking
25th Anniversary Editions? That’s where shit like that belongs,
not on an incredibly high-profile release such as this right here.
Not on something folks have waited for since Clinton was president.
Always Outnumbered is, at best, interesting, mildly amusing. At
worst, it sounds like a novelty record. The Way It Is samples
Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Phoenix is plain and simply a remix of
Shocking Blue’s Love Buzz, a track covered with much more
enthusiasm by Nirvana on their debut. Shoot Down, the last track,
has Liam Gallagher delivering a hook-less vocal line and bass-
slappings from brother Noel.
These tracks at least hold the attention, if only to see what
Howlett has done with the raw material. In most cases though, it’s
that he’s flung a distorted drum beat over the top.
Wake Up Call is the best thing on here, with the two tracks
featuring Juliet Lewis coming joint second. It’s a driving, hip-
hop inflected number, a truly arresting slab of aural mayhem what
makes you pine for the kind of record this could have been, man.
The first single is reportedly Girls, an utterly awful attempt to
jump on the long-pissed off Old Skool Rap bandwagon. That
bandwagon’s gone, man. Look. You see it? No, you don’t, because it
fucked the hell off ages ago.
At times Always Outnumbered recalls Jilted Generation, with Voodoo
People being heavily referenced on a number of occasions. Sadly,
the rest of the time it sounds like a bunch of shit left off the
other records, and for good reason, man.
Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned they say. Well, guess what The
Prodigy? I don’t hear anyone else needing to boast about the
firepower so much. They just go ahead and release brilliant music.
Maybe you should grab a couple more AK’s, The Prodigy, cause
you're gonna need a bullet or two extra if this is the crux of
your defense.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
