Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned

arrived in 2004, it was met with lukewarm reviews. Had The Prodigy peaked? Ironically, their redemption lay in the scene that had initially treated them with the most suspicion.

In 2006, Download booker Andy Copping was looking for a second stage headliner for the Sunday night of his festival. Having seen the band on numerous occasions, he decided to take a risk and approach The Prodigy.

“I knew that the Download crowd would at least give them a chance,” Andy tells us. “And I’d seen them, so I knew what was going to happen. I took an unbelievable amount of stick for that – people were calling for my head, they were saying that I’d gone mad!” “This felt slightly different,” Rob Holliday admits. “There was an edginess. We could see it in each other’s eyes.”

What happened next has passed into Download folklore.

“Even I never expected the absolute carnage that happened that evening,” Andy says, puffing out his cheeks.

“I left a little early to go see the start of Guns N’ Roses, and I looked over at the tent after The Prodigy finished and just remember seeing these kids streaming out with sweat and steam all over them like an army, like something from

“From the second we got onstage it was total chaos,” adds Rob. “The volume was insane and the heat from the audience was what I imagine being trapped in a house fire to be like. I felt like I was going to pass out, watching people clambering up tent poles and climbing up on to the roof.”

The reaction put paid to any suggestion that The Prodigy didn’t belong in the metal scene, and it seemed to re-energise them creatively, too. Far from being a spent force, their second wind came with the ensuing

album in 2009. Possibly their