LIVE REVIEWS
“After losing Keith,” the Prodigy’s Liam Howlett told NME earlier this week, “we couldn’t even think or talk about the band.” It was, he explained, around “two years” before he and vocalist Maxim could even face the prospect. And even then they wondered, “‘Could we play live again? Did we want to? Why? How?’”
The ‘why’, it seems, if that this gloriously unhinged, carnivalesque rave-up is a kind of living, breathing tribute to late vocalist and frenetic vibes man Keith Flint, who tragically took his own life in 2019. This is made explicit during Flint’s anthem ‘Firestarter’: screens on either side of the stage depict his unmistakeable, Devil-horned silhouette in neon green, with lazers beamed out into the audience as though he continues to cast his spell. Howlett and Maxim remix track to slow down Flint’s lyric, “I’m a firestarter!”, an immortal line if ever there was one.
And then there’s the ‘how’. Reading & Leeds’ new Chevron dance stage, replete with a canopy that glitches, flickers and pulses with flashing lights and even the band’s insidious insect logo, is the perfect platform for their return to a festival that, Howlett told NME, has always felt like home. The stage, meanwhile, is like a steam-punk serial killer’s basement from David Fincher’s nightmares: the aesthetic grey and rusted-looking, with analogue numbers counting down and ominous, oversized figures lurking in the background.
Overall, though, this is a glossily produced and sensationally life-affirming gig. In Flint’s absence, Maxim carries the show almost entirely himself: “All my Prodigy warriors here,” he commands, “let me see you! This shit is for life. Live this shit. Breathe it.” When he shouts out “all my shirtless, sweaty warriors in the middle,” live member Rob Holliday cocks his guitar like a rifle as if picking them off. Maxim lets out an ecstatic roar – “Whooooooo!” – to the sonic assault of ‘Roadblox’, the light show glitching out of control and the beats raining down blow after blow; the sense of release palpable.
For a good hour, this is the Greatest Show on Earth. The energy, though, dips in the final third, while the brain-frying ‘We Live Forever’ peters out into low-key bleeps and bloops that sap energy from a closing ‘Out of Space’. Still, the abiding image is that of the festival’s fairground rides scything away in the background as punters pulsate to audio-visual chaos from ahead and above, Flint’s spirit well and truly imbibed.
‘Breathe’
‘Omen’
‘Spitfire’
‘Firestarter’
‘Voodoo People’
‘Roadblox’
‘Light Up the Sky’
‘No Good (Start the Dance)’
‘Poison’
‘Get Your Fight On’
‘Need Some1’
‘Smack My Bitch Up’
‘Take Me to the Hospital’
‘Invaders Must Die’
‘Diesel Power’
‘We Live Forever’
‘Out of Space’
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LIVE REVIEWS
Thursday nights at Heaven don’t often look like this. The London gay club is filled with messy-haired Zoomers wearing baggy jeans and heavy silver chains, who sold out the venue in seconds. They’re here to see 2hollis (real name Hollis Frazier-Herndon), who just last year was booed offstage while supporting Ken Carson on tour. Tonight, however, he gets nothing but adoration.
2hollis first became popular online for making medieval-themed trap and, alongside the likes of Nettspend and fakemink, has been a major influence on fashion and digital culture at large. And though the phrase ‘nepo baby’ has been thrown around (his mother managed Skrillex and founded a successful PR film, while his father is the drummer of American rock band Tortoise), tonight proves 2hollis is a genuine phenomenon with an undeniably organic fanbase.
As the 21-year-old jumps around on stage, his long platinum pigtails bouncing off his bare chest, he looks like a Dragon Age character that went to Central Saint Martins. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he drawls in Auto-Tune to a rapturous response. It’s the most we hear from him all night, but he doesn’t need to be too talkative when his fans react to his presence by slamming their bodies together and waving his red-and-white branded flags like a call to battle.
In a world post-‘Whole Lotta Red’, kids want to be immersed in a wall of noise to get out of their heads and throw down. But with 2hollis, it’s different. His lyrics, though somewhat cringey, actually have sentiment. ‘Sister’ has the whole crowd singing: “Girl, I love you like a sister / Cross my fingers when I’m with you / Hold back a smile ’til my teeth hurt.” They’re lines that could be lifted from a noughties Bieber album, but backed by Drain Gang beats that propel it into the TikTok age.
In response, the crowd gives each song the big hitter treatment: every word is cried back at blistering volume, there’s no break in the moshing, and there’s never a moment to pop out for a quick ciggy (everyone’s vaping anyway).
Standouts include the sugary sweet ‘Crush’, which has an 80 per cent male crowd singing sweetly while smacking into each other; ‘Afraid’, with an appearance from support act and childhood friend Nate Sib (who had the crowd riled up nicely from his earlier set); and ‘Jeans’ – which goes down so well that he does it four times.
Though it does feel like 2hollis didn’t quite have control of the crowd to start, sheer excitement has them jumping incessantly to the first few songs that it almost doesn’t matter what he was playing. By the end, he manages to wrangle them into place. He reminds them to give each other space, perches on the side of the stage for slower moments like a real teenage pop star and even gets right up against the barrier for the final rendition of ‘Jeans’ before finally declaring: “That’s it!” After doing three encores, he needn’t say much else.
‘Gold’
‘Say It Again’
‘FORFEIT’
‘Trauma’
‘Poster Boy’
‘Sister’
‘Need That’
‘Lie’
‘Two Bad’
‘Crush’
‘GOD (Live Edit)’
‘Style’
‘Whiplash’
‘Cliche’
‘Afraid (With Nate Sib)’
‘Light’
‘Ouu (Alongside Rommulas)’
‘Jeans’
‘Jeans’
‘Jeans’
‘Jeans’
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