Since The Fat Of The Land topped charts in 1997, Liam Howlett hasn’t done much more than sit at home and twiddle his thumbs.
This is just the group’s second album since, and signs of progress are conspicuously absent. Invaders Must Die would be a contender for album of the year, if the year was 1993.
The Prodigy still sound exactly like The Prodigy, then, and not always in a good way.
The title track is a hideous amalgam of rock and rave; Colours is packed with the clichés they created; and Omen confirms that Keith Flint is far better at shouting gibberish and mugging for the camera than singing (although Take Me To The Hospital suggests he’s not actually much cop at the gibberish stuff these days).
Invaders occasionally elevates itself above the mundane: on Warriors Dance, for instance, and the crunching Thunder.
But it never once surprises, and the overriding impression is of a tribute band paying homage to itself. WILL FULFORD-JONES
