There's a wild, madcap energy to it-I'm reminded, incongruously enough, of Colourbox's "Hot Doggie", from 4AD's Lonely Is an Eyesore compilation-that carries through the rest of the album's best songs. The guitar riff rains down like a buzz bomb and the quarter-note ride cymbal sounds like an anvil Martina Topley-Bird, of all people, sings a trembling couplet borrowed from Cole Porter's "All Through the Night". The title song, which opens the album, is a malevolent high point. Perhaps The Day Is My Enemy benefits from the fact that, in the past few years, the zeitgeist has moved on yet again-to hip-hop and R&B, on the one hand, and deeper, moodier shades of dance music on the other-which means that the Prodigy sound increasingly like a genre of one. After a seven-year wait, 2004's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned was a mixed bag of Fat of the Land-style retreads, and, five years after that, Invaders Must Die sounded like still more rendered Fat drippings rescued from the pan-just beefed up to meet the production standards of the then-ascendant dubstep scene. That record's concussive repercussions can still be felt through all manner of dance music that is loud, aggressive, and in love with its own transgressions: Skrillex, "Express Yourself", "Turn Down for What", you name it.īut the Prodigy never really seemed to matter in quite the same way again. That attitude, paired with Howlett's machine-gun breakbeats, mangled cartoon samples, and acid-metal amalgams, repeatedly took the group to the upper reaches of the British pop charts, and it helped them become one of the first British dance acts to break America when they signed a rumored $5 million contract-with Madonna's Maverick label, no less-for their 1997 album The Fat of the Land, a Trojan Horse for "electronica" that also paved the way for a lot of regrettable rap-rock. raved under the sign of a giant yellow smiley face, the Prodigy adopted a demonic rictus. A quarter-century, after all, is an awfully long time to try to hold a sneer, but that's precisely what they've been doing since Liam Howlett founded the group in 1990 with a couple of dancers, Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill. Part of the pleasure to be derived from the Prodigy's sixth studio album comes from the fact that there's really no reason, in 2015, for the Prodigy still to exist. Never discount the salubrious effects of lowered expectations.