The Day Is My Enemy By The Prodigy Is Rowdy But Late.

Sometimes, before I go out, I still watch the music video for ‘Smack My Bitch Up’. There’s a quality to it that is perfect in ways that I don’t think will ever be recaptured. The Prodigy, led by the arguably the smartest bloke in production, Liam Howlett, shifted the landscape then disappeared for a while. Their latest LP, The Day Is My Enemy, is a powerful & raucous release, but after listening to it quite a number of times since it was released in full, I’m dogged by one remaining question. What took so long? This is a sound that the dance music landscape has needed for some time now, but it’s also not the ground-breaking, earth-shattering release we were informed about in more than one interview.

EDMTunes has spoken about a few of the main singles off of The Day Is My Enemy, so I won’t waste any time there. The Day Is My Enemy is superior to ‘Destroy’, ‘Nasty‘ and ‘Rebel Radio’, in every way, to the point where I’m unsure why those were included at all. ‘Ibiza’ is a great feature of Sleaford Mods, but at the same time, the references & Ibiza itself hasn’t really mattered in a decade, so I’m not sure the impact they’re going for is going to be felt outside of the UK. However, once you get past that, the album brightens significantly, with the best work The Prodigy has done in a while. To note, this is the #1 Album in the UK now, so the general accomplishment of the work needs to be recognized.

‘Wild Frontier‘ is the drum & bass track that I was hoping for on Invaders Must Die. I think the fact that it exists will ensure at some point we get a few massive remixes that will see huge play over the season, especially at D&B-centric festivals. ‘Rok-weiler’ has a modern feel without losing the big beat construct that they’re known for. It’s the kind of sound that we got a taste of in the Expanded edition of Fat of the Land, when they mixed with Noisia & others (the sound I expected the entire album to be, at the bare minimum). The classic sound combined with some more powerful bass work, with an emphasis on the attitude and punch does what it needs to do. The problem is, that’s all it does. 3:50, with a bridge in the same place it would be in a regular radio track. The secondary build doesn’t do anything the first one does. I like both of them, but, I wanted a bit more. I can’t reproach a big room track for being repetitive, then celebrate when someone who’s not Martin Garrix does it.

‘Beyond The Deathray’ is my 2nd favorite track on the album because it’s one of the first times they do something I didn’t expect. The dystopian progressive really does come out as a new sound that I haven’t heard anywhere. Industrial, cyber-goth, hard-trance, hardstyle, all of them try. It never sounds like this. But, again, there’s no secondary build. When ‘Beyond The Deathray’ gets remixed, we’re going to be in for an amazing track. The combination between this production value and a competent bassline will be majestic. Hey bedroom DJs, want the world to notice you? Create an epic remix of ‘Beyond The Deathray’.

‘Rhythm Bomb’ makes me hope that there is some kind of mentorship going on between Flux & Liam. These two are some of the most groundbreaking producers in the history of UK dance music, so I am really going to just assume that Flux Pavilion is getting crazy beat jedi training. The track is another competent effort to create growl-y, aggressive bass in a post-dubstep world.

‘Roadblox’ and ‘Get Your Fight On’ are actually strong tracks, that emphasize some breakbeat techniques, but at the same time, they feature the same “this could’ve been released 5 years ago” quality. Medicine has an ethnic quality to it, which is nice, and there’s more of the same.

‘Invisible Sun’ is far and away favorite track. It’s one of the only tracks on the LP that seems to have really been a stretch from Liam’s previous work. The anthem rock combined with some stupendous synth work make for a compelling track that I feel is the strongest on the album by far. However, it wasn’t a single, so given the critical reception to the album, very few people that aren’t fans of The Prodigy are going to hear it now, as it’s track 13 on a 14 track album. Which is a shame because, as we all know, no one buys albums anymore.

To sum up, if you’re a fan of The Prodigy, it’s more of what you like, so you’re in luck. The new album is exactly what you’re looking for and serves up a heaping dose of it. If you were looking for the ground-breaking EDM-killer that Liam talked about, that is sadly absent. I don’t want to say I’m disappointed, because I’ll definitely be listening to a couple of these tracks months from now, however, this is not the destabilizing force we heard talked up in interview after interview. This didn’t seem particularly difficult to make, nor a creative stretch. When it comes to artists taking years off to reinvent themselves creatively, please, be my guest, take the time. But nothing on this release feels like a huge step forward. At times, it felt like Liam realized he had enough items in a draft folder that he could bang out and tour on, so he did the work. Is it Fat Of The Land? Absolutely not. Can anything ever be? Probably not.

What do you think? Huge letdown? Huge album? Let us know: