RUN WITH THE WOLVES
Where The Prodigy's self-assured, gang-minded campaign turns into a maniacal, nose bleeding, heads-against-the-wall warzone with body blowing beats courtesy of Dave Grohl set firmly to ultraviolence.
Keith: “A track that Dave Grohl got involved with. All started with an email to Liam saying ‘listen man I’ve finished touring and I’m bang up for doing something’. Liam said he was just finishing the album but Dave said listen, ‘I’m just going to go in the studio and put down some drums’, which he did. A hard drive arrived at our studio and out of that come the process of writing this. We had the vocal on another track already but they just weren’t working. They had too much venom for the track. But we still enjoyed the excitement of it and what it was saying and this was the ideal opportunity to make it work. Liam redid the track, then we redid the vocals and we sent it over to Dave who was like ‘yeah I was really hoping it was going to be something like this’. He was really excited and worked some more on it.”
Liam: “I think you were angry the day you wrote this weren’t you?”
Keith: “Yeah I was”
Liam: “Yeah it was definitely written about a certain someone, who we don’t know who it is but Keith does.”
Maxim: “Was it about me?’
Liam: “Nah, don’t get para. Hah, when I listen to this tune I just want to smash my head against the wall. It kind of like when the riff drops in it’s just violent you know?”
OMEN REPRISE
Menacing, stalking, watching; the dark raiders wait in the shadows, hearts beating like analogue thunder, wired into the future mainline of Bladerunner. The darkest hour before the final battle.
Liam: “It’s the only breather on the album. It’s an orchestrated version of ‘Omen’ but it really reminds me of the music from Scarface. It’s got this 80s Vangelis sound.”
Keith: “It’s like a dark Bladerunner. When I listen to it I hear rain and … yeah definitely a Vangelis vibe.”
Liam: “Not that Vangelis are cool.”
Maxim: “But it was definitely needed on the album. So much of this album is an in your face onslaught. You get a breather, then it starts again, slapping you in the face.”
WORLD’S ON FIRE
Already a fan’s favourite, this resurrects a 'flaming' theme and applies it to a groove straight out second album 'Music for the Jilted Generation' and slices it down the middle with a sample of R&S classic rave tune 'Vamp' by Outlander. It's the kind of fucked up twist that you quickly come to expect on this album.
Maxim: “Liam had some ideas that he’d been working on and I heard this and said ‘man that’s bad, you’ve got to work on that’. We started working on it … about 8 years ago! It’s had about 30 versions now, none of them seemed to work, but we kept going back to it. I was always on Liam’s case about it. We threw loads of ideas at it, you know lyrical ideas, but nothing would stick until we moved into a small studio.” Liam: “Some of the old ravers out there might recognise the sample in it. It’s Outlander’s ‘Vamp’ on R&S records, which was a huge influence on me. I still remember where I first heard that tune. It was in Raindance in East London and …”
Maxim: “We play this tune live and when that riff comes in it just goes off.”
Liam: “Maxim was the real push behind this and I eventually found a happy mix. I love this tune now.”
PIRANHA
‘Get Up Get Off’ from the last album meets old skool classic ‘Everybody in the Place’, ‘Piranha’ rips the threads from the back of 60's garage and pussy whips it into the scumbag guttercrawl of modern urban life.
Liam: “Piranha is a metaphor for something living off of you, you know, chewing off you. That was the concept of the track. We wanted to have 1960s B-movies vibe to it, garage punk 1960s sound.”
Maxim: “For me it was a chance to do different vocal ideas rather than monotone. I tried injecting more melody into the vocals. This track, like the rest of my vocals on the album is a real step up for me.”
STAND UP
After 45 minutes of having your head battered by future nostalgia, serotonin levels twisted by feel-good horror core and your synapses snapped by whiplash attitude, Invaders Must Die delivers its final, brilliant twist - a Manfred Mann horn-drenched anthem that aches with the positivity of a new dawn and swaggers like Shaolin victors strolling through the carnage created by their own weaponry. Heads held high, wry smiles on their faces and a look that says “We are The Prodigy … no- one else comes close.”
Liam: “It’s like when you’ve been getting battered with a baseball bat and then this comes in … like when you went out and the DJ would tease you with one last tune, something warm and uplifting. It’s a really good way to end the record, uplifting and victorious. This is the real wild card on the album. I think people will go ‘is that the Prodigy or isn’t it?’ but its got this real victorious feel. It’s a tune I really love and it’s like being wrapped up in a warm blanket before you fuck off home.”
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