Album Review :: The Prodigy - Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned.

Seven years has passed since The Fat of the Land, one of the most incredible albums of the nineties, catapaulted The Prodigy into the big leagues of the mainstream. Nu-dance anthems Firestarter and Smack my Bitch Up brought a new era of dance to the masses.

After what seemed an eternity, we have Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. Moving sideways away from Fat of The Land, the boys from Braintree try to stall a middle ground artisticly between their albums.

Punk, Industrial and Evil are the words that come to mind when you try to describe the album. Every track is hardcore – there's no radio “friendlyness” here. You couldn't call Firestarter “friendly”, but the tracks on AONO sound as if they started off as being radio friendly, but have mutated into deprieved beasts.

Take current single Girls and Hotride. You have something that resembles radio friendliness, but has been injected with an overdose of thumping bass and bad-ass attitude.

The Way It Is samples Michael Jackson's Thriller and turns the sinister level to maximum. On Shoot Down, Liam Gallagher's voice has been distored so acutely that you'd swear it wasn't him but some barbaric hooligan.

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned seems like an album that's trapped between the towering pillars of Experience and Fat of the Land. The album being scrapped gives away a clue that the guys didn't know exactly what they wanted this album to be.

What we have is an album that tries to climb the height of past glories via a different route, that unfortunately leads The Prodigy down a long and winding road. There are no weak tracks on the album, but for all the hard hitting beats and melodies, it's message and direction wanes after a while.

Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned is a very good album, and is defiently worth a buy if you're into any hardcore electronica or a Prodigy fan. One word of warning; Keith and thingy weren't aiming a “commercial” album, so neither should you.

Rating: 7