By Josh Herwitt //

The Prodigy with Nitepunk //
The Warfield – San Francisco
April 13th, 2025 //

As someone who grew up in the 90’s and whose musical taste was shaped largely by the decade’s zeitgeist, my initial interest in electronic music dates back to the first time I ever heard The Prodigy.

The year was 1997 and the UK group’s seminal album The Fat of the Land had exploded into the mainstream, reaching No. 1 on the charts at home and in the states as music videos for hit singles “Breathe” and “Smack My Bitch Up” frequently played on MTV.

But there was something different about the raw, unapologetic sound crafted by producer, keyboardist, songwriter and founding member Liam Howlett that infiltrated the underground rave scene, eventually making The Prodigy one of the most successful electronic acts of all time with an estimated 25 million albums sold worldwide.

The Prodigy, for starters, were the only electronic act at the time to feature not just vocalists, but also dancers as full-time band members. In fact, it wasn’t until Howlett met dancers Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill during one of his early DJ gigs at a nightclub in Braintree that the project came to fruition — with the band’s name being conceived from the Moog Prodigy synthesizer that Howlett used to make some of the music he would originally share with them on a mix tape requested by Flint.

And unlike their fellow Big Beat peers in The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method and Fatboy Slim that all formed shortly after The Prodigy unveiled their debut EP What Evil Lurks in 1991, incorporating more traditional rock instrumentation in the form of guitars, keyboards and drums with other burgeoning art forms — turntablism, sampling and beatboxing for instance — that were gaining traction across the music industry was what separated them from the rest and continues to be an integral part of the sonic formula they have followed over the past 34 years.

For as long as I have been a fan of The Prodigy and lived in Los Angeles though, it always surprised me that I had never seen them perform live. Even in a city with no shortage of live music and entertainment options every night of the week, there haven’t been many opportunities to catch Howlett and company in the flesh with the band limiting its trips across the pond.

Then in 2019, those prospects suddenly looked much more bleak after Flint was found dead in his North End home at the age of 49. The Prodigy, having just released their seventh album No Tourists less than six months prior, were a couple of months away from touring the U.S. for the first time in a decade, and with the shows — none of them on the West Coast — immediately canceled, no one knew sadly if they would ever get back out there again.

So, when Goldenvoice announced The Prodigy would play a Coachella sideshow in between their two performances at the festival this year, I knew that might be my only chance to finally cross them off my bucket list. That meant driving almost 400 miles north to SF for their first North American headline date since 2017, but after snagging tickets to the first show at The Warfield that quickly sold out as well as a second performance they added subsequently for the previous night, it felt like the odds were stacking up in my favor.

When I arrived at the 102-year-old vaudeville theater before the doors had opened, there were already two lines of people going down Market St. in either direction. This was technically the add-on gig, and while there were tickets available for those who wanted to purchase a seat in the balcony section, the floor area downstairs had filled up by 8 p.m. when Nitepunk hit the decks to kick off the evening.

An hour later, and it’s fair to say the place was completely packed to the gills with the clock nearing 9 p.m. The roar of the crowd that greeted The Prodigy as they walked out provided us with a pretty good indication things were about to go off, and it didn’t take longer than a minute for such to transpire. The opening notes to “Breathe” sent the pit into an absolute frenzy that didn’t let up for the next 75 minutes as Howlett and Maxim (vocals, beatboxing) plus touring members Rob Holliday (guitars, bass) and Leo Crabtree (drums, percussion) powered through a setlist that covered most of the project’s catalog. We do wonder why no material from 2004’s Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned made the cut by the end of the set, but the ensuing “Voodoo People” on 1994’s Music for the Jilted Generation was still a treat to hear live. Other highlights included a melody of older tracks — which began with “Climbatize” before transitioning to “Everybody in the Place” and “Warrior’s Dance” — along with a tribute to Flint during “Firestarter” that earned loud cheers from the audience at the outset.

Stadium anthems “Light Up the Sky” and “Invaders Must Die” offered visceral moments for everyone to sing along to when it came time for the chorus in each song, but the energy never waned regardless of the brief encore break that put a pause on the party. Returning with “Smack My Bitch Up” is one way to ensure that doesn’t happen and the final stretch that saw “Take Me to the Hospital”, “We Live Forever” and “Out of Space” was another, leaving us mostly out of breath when we exited the building.

Was it everything we could have asked for? Maybe if they had dropped “Diesel Power” we could say yes unequivocally, but knowing that the original date at The Warfield ended up being canceled the following night after Howlett spent the next day in the hospital on an IV drip, we feel fortunate to have gotten any taste of The Prodigy while they were here in California. Because with a record-breaking streak of seven straight No. 1 albums back home and new tunes currently being worked on, there remains hope among us “party people” it might not be too long before their return to the U.S. and you can bet we will be ready whenever and wherever that is.

Setlist:
Breathe
Voodoo People
Omen
Climbatize / Everybody in the Place / Warrior’s Dance
Beyond the Deathray
Firestarter
Light Up the Sky
Roadblox
Poison
No Good (Start the Dance)
Get Your Fight On
Invaders Must Die

Encore:
Smack My Bitch Up
Take Me to the Hospital
We Live Forever
Out of Space