"WHO came here tonight to rock?" It ought to be a strange question for a dance band to ask their audience, even the, dripping with sweat and distracted with snogging Dublin one that invaded the Point last night. As it happens, however, for several years, now Liam Howlett, the guiding intelligence behind the Prodigy, has been leading his screaming electropunk regiment further and further away from purist dance music, and closer and closer to good old death metal.
Even with the promised album delayed into the new year, the Prodigy live show provides plenty of evidence, including a windmilling electric guitarist, that the band's sound is getting nastier by the hour. A slow, thundering sub bass does most of the ground work, drums dripping with dub by effects follow close behind, roared promises of evil and menacing stabs of guitar fill in the spaces.
The Prodigy, it seems, have come true on their promise to build a brand new music from the history of pop. They may owe something to Johnny Rotten, a touch to Kraftwerk and a little to Lee Scratch Perry, but the result of their creative looting is a sound with a uniquely 1990s violence to it.
Like the gargantuan, tigerprint lampshades that hang above the stage, the Prodigy offer an unsettling mix of the cosily familiar and something strange and irresistibly frightening.
The set from the Breath video - the grimmest two up two up two down in the hole of Hell - provides the backdrop for the night's entertainment, allowing Keith plenty of room to strut off occasionally into the ochre inferno, presumably to find a new, murderous chant with which to taut the crowd.
The Prodigy do a great deal of taunting, whether teasing their fans with short burst of thundering gabba paced beats, or trying to stir up a bit of traditional call and response... No matter how protracted the pantomime, however, there is never any doubt that the band are simply taking a breather before their next assault. The number one singles, Breath and Firestarter, are rolled out, the older tracks down played, the samples mashed in, the sonic assault total.
The new rock n roll formula may be adhered too a little strictly - the Prodigy used to have two songs, now they apparently, only have need for one, that familiar headbutting metal rant - but there is no denying that it is a potent one.
