The Prodigy - Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned

Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned always stood out like a sore thumb for me in The Prodigy's history. I was in comp (high school for all y'all Yanks out there) when this came out and I remember in the press / build up to it that there was some sort of uneasy feeling that everyone had because Keith and Maxim weren't going to be in tow as vocalists (I think Maxim sneaks in on "Spitfire" in the end).

What I take away from everything that went on around this album; the fact it took seven years to come out after Fat Of The Land, the fact that it had neither of the two main faces of the band involved, the fact that Howlett has detailed how he struggled to get the music down for this until he was in the right frame of mind / place... I'm not saying that this album was rushed, but it is much more like a Liam Howlett solo album than it is a bona fide The Prodigy record. This is, of course, where the trickiness begins; Howlett is, by all rights, The Prodigy. It is all his music. The trouble is, is that everyone - especially Joe Public - associates Keith Flint and Maxim Reality with being the faces of The Prodigy, and with those two massively charismatic figures missing, if only from the record and not from the live show, its easy to see why this was a bit of a flop.

Don't get me wrong, everything Juliette Lewis touches just oozes sexiness, but I think this was a gamble that didn't really pay off.