“Are all my warriors here?” asks the Prodigy’s rapper, Maxim. If there is something faintly ridiculous about ascribing the term “warriors” to a lot of people who are punching the air and gleefully waving their mobile phones, it doesn’t matter to the Prodigy or their monster-partying audience. The entire tribe sings along to openers Breathe and Omen. There are enough strobes and lights to suggest an alien landing, and we’re only five songs in when horn-haired co-frontman Keith Flint charges into the 1996 classic Firestarter – and seems to actually glow red.
If the past 23 years have allowed the dance behemoths to amass a catalogue that allows them to deliver such aces early on, the set otherwise rages against any drift towards the dreaded “heritage” status by concentrating on The Day Is My Enemy, which ended the Essex trio’s six-year absence with a sixth No 1 album.
The likes of Nasty Nasty and Wild Frontier offer yet more berserk electro-punk, drum’n’bass beats and arcade-game frenzy – with the odd curveball such as Medicine’s eastern-music sample – but are pulversing enough to be greeted like old favourites. Indeed, lest anyone suggest that men in their 40s should be handed their pipe and slippers, Wall of Death angrily takes on the hazards faced by the ageing raver: “Fuck you and your heart attack.”
In 80 minutes, they take one short breather – for the eerie, slightly Philip Glass-like Beyond the Deathray - before Voodoo People becomes “Newcastle people” and, in election week in the UK, the old anti-criminal justice-bill protest song Their Law still sounds thrillingly insurrectionary. Maxim’s “let me see all my people” mantra gets a bit wearing after the 35th time, but it’s hard to feel prudish about the notorious Smack My Bitch Up when it’s being sung by exultant warrior teenage girls.
• At the Spa Bridlington Spa, 5 May. Box office: 01262 678258. At O2 Academy, Birmingham, 7 May. Box office: 0844 477 2000. Then touring.
