Prodigy tick all the right boxes

You pretty much know what you’re going to get with a Prodigy gig, and last night at the Marquee in Cork they again managed to tick those quality boxes they’ve been filling in since they first burst on the scene in the early 1990s.

A blitzkrieg of massive beats? Check. Classic dance tunes augmented with a smattering of newer material hinting at how they’ve managed to stay relevant through the genre’s fickle fads? Got it. A superb stage show fronted by the dynamic Maxim Reality and the Keith ‘Mohican’ Flint? Definitely. An up for it Cork crowd in a busy Marquee? Without doubt.

When the Prodigy first played Cork in 1995, they blasted out a storming set at the Féile held in the stadium adjacent to the Marquee. Fewer than half of tonight’s crowd are old enough to have been there, and the hefty batch of younger people who bought the €60 tickets for tonight show indicate there’s probably plenty life left in the group.

You suspect the explosion of dubstep and wider EDM market in the US would readily welcome a slightly-tweaked Prodigy sound. And no better boy than Liam Howlett to lead the way. The least prominent man on stage tonight, Howlett is the classically-trained Essex native behind most of the group’s music. He managed the transition from rave-era studio act to band-like stadium rockers like few of his peers. Forty-three next month, Howlett has just announced a new “violent-sounding” album for later this year, but much of his old music still packs a punch. And that’s not just ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ the controversial hit from 1995’s The Fat of the Land whose domestic violence accusations the Prodigy producer has always rejected. A reworked ‘Firestarter’ and brilliant opener ‘Breathe’ still manage to rock a crowd with ease, while ‘Poison’ is of an even earlier vintage.

“I got the pulsating rhythmical remedy for ya” they chant on ‘Poison’. Tonight’s Marquee crowd wouldn’t disagree.