Liam Howlett of The Prodigy on ‘fake controversy’, the band’s fired-up frontman Flint and new ‘old’ album ahead of Clockenflap
British techno-punk survivors headline Saturday night at this month’s Hong Kong festival, and Liam Howlett says it is playing live that keeps the band going – though a new album is on the cards in 2018
The British techno-punks have, over the past three decades, turned rave into a shock-and-awe spectacle, repackaging dance music as an aural weapon, firing off beat-seeking missiles in performances that aren’t so much shows as military campaigns. They are destined to be the most explosive band ever to hit the Clockenflap stage.
The outfit are a well-drilled, tattooed, musical war machine, wielding ghoulish make-up and punk attitude, and have fought off all challengers to their position as Britain’s biggest musical attraction. From the Happy Mondays to Blur, the Chemical Brothers to the Oasis brothers, all have lacked the firepower or the determination to outgun The Prodigy.
“We’re not exactly quiet and shy – just look at us,” the band’s commander in chief, Liam Howlett, says in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post. “We didn’t want to be pop stars on TV like other bands did. We hardly ever did any TV because we want people to come to the show and see it in real time.
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“And we always respected the underground culture we came from,” says the DJ, keyboardist and production whiz, who has led his band into battle from the front since getting together with mates Keith Flint, Maxim Reality and Leroy Thornhill in Essex, eastern England, in the late 1980s.
