Father time is undefeated. The Prodigy doesn’t care.
Next year marks the 35th anniversary of “Charly,” the British electronic punks’ first single. Since the starter’s gun went off on the group’s career, seven studio albums have dropped — for seven No. 1s in their homeland.
Their sound, those big, broken beats and that signature, nasty compressed synth, crossed the Atlantic and gave the lads a groundbreaking #1 in the world’s biggest music market at a time when, to paraphrase Eminem, no one was listening to techno.
It makes no sense for the Prodigy, in 2025, to still be in the hunt. More so when the group lost its frontman Keith Flint, a weapon of a performer.
When the group lit up Brisbane once again on Sunday night, February 16th, they did so for the first time without their firestarter, and raised a middle finger to old father time.
Five years have passed since the Prodigy last toured these parts, or anywhere. That 2019 tour of Australia and New Zealand turned out to be Flint’s swansong, the dancer and energy man passing just weeks after those shows.
If there were question marks on this third incarnation of the Prodigy, on stamina and fire, the answers were provided in the first half hour of this latest performance.
On a balmy school night, Liam Howlett, the producer, the mastermind, and the alchemist of this act, switched up the setlist from the previous two shows at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion. Flint wasn’t in the house, but his spirit sure was as samples of his “crowd disruptor” line from Fat of the Land’s “Serial Thrilla” rang out and paved a sonic path into “Breathe.” Maxim handled Keith’s lines.
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“It’s just getting fucking warm,” emcee Maxim remarked during a lull in “Voodoo People.” He wasn’t wrong. Brisbane at this time of year is either too hot for comfort, or battered by storms. “There’s a lot of fucking people here. Is this all the fucking people in Brisbane or what?” The numbers on the Riverstage’s sloping lawn were actually closer to 9,000, all of them dancing.
More questions were answered when the Prodigy hit “Firestarter,” the 1996 hit that saw Flint take the mic for the first time — and take over the sales charts (“Firestarter” logged three weeks at No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart and its parent, Fat of the Land, topped the Billboard 200).
More than any song in their arsenal, “Firestarter” represents Keith Flint. At the top, a reminder by way of a projection of Flint’s face on the backdrop. Then, in the song proper, the Prodigy paid homage by not inserting Flint’s vocal samples into the mix. He is, after all, irreplaceable.
Backed by live drums and guitars, Howlett and Co. delivered something old, something new, by swinging through “Light Up the Sky” from their latest studio album, 2018’s No Tourists, “Roadblock” and the classics “Poison” and “No Good,” “Their Law” and a cracking mashup of “Diesel Power” with the theme from “Knight Rider”.
A Prodigy set doesn’t have soft moments. It’s a relentless flurry of punches to the eyes and the ears, never a cheesy ballad in sight.
Many in the audience on Sunday night are old-school, followers from day nought. Australia’s underground rave scene had early access to the Prodigy, and the Sunshine State had rare clearance. The original lineup, a foursome of Howlett with Flint, Maxim and dancer Leeroy Thornhill had the honours of closing the legendary Fortitude Valley nightclub The Site back in 1994.
In 1996, before the Prodigy went supernova, a remarkable set performed some 75km down the Pacific Motorway for the Gold Coast leg of the Big Day Out, playing the Boiler Room. Boiling Room, more like. The concrete space was so hot, Flint reportedly exited the gig on a stretcher. He wasn’t the only one.
The following year, the Prodigy graduated to the mainstage of the once-mighty festival.
“Is Brisbane too fucking hot for you?” Not for me,” Maxim declared on Sunday night. “I thrive in this shit. It’s cold for me …all my hot and sweat sweaty people”.
A four-song encore closed out the evening, leading with “Smack My Bitch Up” and ending with “Out of Space,” a standout from that debut album Experience, released a year after Nirvana changed the music world with Nevermind.
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Though the Prodigy’s albums output has dried up in recent years, Howlett tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ that more music is on the way. And with any new release, a great excuse to hit the road again.
“We love fucking coming to Australia,” remarked Maxim near the close. “Good weather, good food, good fucking people”.
Lock it in.
The Prodigy’s 2025 Australian tour wraps up Tuesday, February 18th with a performance at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena.
See Tone Deaf’s exclusive photos from the sold-out opening night of the Prodigy’s 2025 “Disrupta” tour, presented by Handsome Tours, Astral People & Double J.
