![the prodigy always outnumbered never outgunned the prodigy always outnumbered never outgunned](https://dnrvinyl.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/always-outnumbered-prodigy-rotated.jpg)
Admittedly, Fat of the Land was nowhere near as challenging and cerebral a work as 1995’s classic Music for the Jilted Generation, but the recycled beats and willfully offensive “Temper” made “Smack My Bitch Up” look like a lost outtake from Slanted and Enchanted. Whereas before you had the violent but ultimately ambiguous “Smack My Bitch Up”, now you had an ode to literal date rape in the form of a paean to the knock-out drug Rohypinol. “Temper” took everything that had been good about Fat of the Land and ramped it up beyond the limits of self-parody. Oh, and lets not forget 2002’s disastrous “Baby’s Got a Temper”, which is on the short list of worst singles ever released by a great bad. What has Liam Howlett been doing? Well, according to frequent press reports, he played a lot of video games. The Chemical Brothers fairly easily stepped out of the Prodigy’s shadow, becoming critical darlings and quietly building what could arguably be considered the most impressive body of work within the genre. Norman Cook, in his Fatboy Slim guise, has had practically his entire career in the previous seven years. After facing almost certain career suicide with 1996’s Animal Rights, Moby rose to the pinnacle of the genre, eventually selling many more copies of 1999’s Play than had been sold of Fat of the Land. In that time, in the minds of most Americans, electronic music has fallen to the status of a novelty genre. Seven years have passed since Keith Flint graced the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. (Wouldn’t we all like to live in a world where Underworld outsold Linkin Park? Er, well, I would, at least.) So the fact that “electronica” went out with a whimper is not so much of a surprise, albeit the fact that it is still disappointment. It was something of a fallacy to pretend that just because someone liked the propulsive and incendiary “Firestarter” they would go out and grab a copy of Roni Size’s meditative New Forms or Aphex Twin’s mentallyunhinged Richard D. Of course, it goes without saying that they were hardly the forerunners of any great “electronica invasion”: they were a singular group, and all of their peers in the European electronic music scene were similarly unique.
#The prodigy always outnumbered never outgunned full
When they came across the Atlantic to America in 1997, its no real surprise that they did as well as they did: they were angry and full of energy at the exact time when America needed something angry and energetic. Regardless of the fact that mastermind Liam Howlett used synthesizers and processors instead of (and sometimes in addition to) electric guitars, they were very much heirs to the early British punk tradition. They did not have the cerebral heft of Orbital, or the sonic virtuosity of the Chemical Brothers, but they had the kind of manic punk menace that you simply can’t buy.
![the prodigy always outnumbered never outgunned the prodigy always outnumbered never outgunned](https://theprodigy.info/media/image/sleeves/aono/58082289sh9.jpg)
The thing that made the Prodigy so special was always their energy. Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned is a good album, don’t get me wrong, but this cannot but come as something of a disappointment when you consider how unbelievably great their three prior albums were. Which is all a very circuitous way of saying that the Prodigy’s long-awaited follow up to 1997’s epochal, genre-defining Fat of the Land is nowhere near as good as you may have hoped. Unless you’re Brian Wilson, there’s just no competing with your younger self (and in the case of Smile, it must be remembered, he was basically just picking up where he left off some 30-odd years earlier - or did I miss all the rave reviews for Getting’ in Over My Head?) That’s what happens when artists get locked up in history, unable or unwilling to release new music until it’s too late: invariably, the long shadows of their historical achievements become an overwhelming obstacle to their current creativity. Oh, it’ll probably get here in a bit, but it will most definitely not be worth the wait. I’ve got a word to the wise for any Guns N’ Roses fans who might be reading this review: I wouldn’t hold your breath for Chinese Democracy.