Top 10 Best Songs by The Prodigy

The track that made Keith Flint a worldwide cult icon overnight and the terror of worried parents. Liam Howlett built it around a bone-dry drum loop and a sharp guitar fragment sampled from The Breeders and The Art of Noise. But it was Flint's fire-breathing debut as a vocalist, with the historic opening line 'I'm the trouble starter, punkin' instigator', that lit the fuse. The raw, claustrophobic black-and-white video in an abandoned London Underground tunnel did the rest: it gave The Prodigy their first UK number one.

Built around a murky, creeping breakbeat, a sinister guitar hook and the sound of a drawn sword. In Breathe, Keith Flint and Maxim act as two predators goading each other over a heavy bassline that cuts to the bone. Howlett's masterful control of dynamics, alternating chilling silences with hurricane-force releases, made this follow-up to Firestarter an instant classic that topped charts in several countries.

Pure production genius. Howlett chopped a vocal fragment from Ultramagnetic MCs and combined it with a hypnotic Indian-style vocal by Shahin Badar. The track builds to one of the most devastating drops in dance history. Despite major controversy over the title and Jonas Åkerlund's notorious first-person video, it remains an untouchable monument of electronic precision.

The ultimate bridge between euphoric early rave and the darker hardcore breakbeat of Music for the Jilted Generation. Howlett sampled Kelly Charles' soulful vocal ('You're no good for me') and sped it up over a runaway rave beat. The combination of bouncing basslines and classic warehouse rave synths delivers an irresistible adrenaline rush that still sets any dance floor ablaze.

After a period of experimentation, the group gloriously returned to their roots in 2009 with the album Invaders Must Die. Omen is an explosion of pure festival energy: a ghostly chime motif flips within seconds into lightning-fast drums and the rousing chants of Maxim and Flint. The track proved The Prodigy had lost none of their urgency and venom in the 21st century.

A nostalgic trip back to the sun-drenched raves of 1992. Howlett brilliantly combined Max Romeo's reggae vocals ('I'm gonna put on an iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth') with Ultramagnetic MCs' high-pitched 'I'll take your brain to another dimension'. The result is a wild, bouncing rave party full of squealing synthesizers and unfiltered optimism that symbolizes the birth of British dance culture.

The guitar riff, replayed by Howlett and taken from Nirvana's Very Ape, gives Voodoo People an unmistakable rock attitude. Add a ripping flute melody from Johnny Pate and a rousing breakbeat, and you have a spellbinding voodoo trip. The later Pendulum remix gave the song a second life decades later, but the 1994 original remains unmatched in atmosphere and tension.

Where The Prodigy usually dealt in supersonic speeds, Howlett shifted down to a slow, heavy hip-hop groove on Poison. Maxim takes the lead with the ominous warning 'I got the poison, I got the remedy.' The heavy analog kick drums and Howlett's relentless percussion showed that slowness can hit as hard as a freight train.

The title track of their 2009 comeback album acts as a declaration of war on generic pop. Fat, buzzing basslines, stuttering synths and a pounding tempo make it a favorite show opener, celebrating the band's tight brotherhood and loyal fan base.

Their second official single and a blueprint of Britain's 'hardcore continuum'. With rousing piano riffs, rolling snares and the iconic call 'Everybody in the place, let's go!', The Prodigy nearly reached number one in the UK in 1992, kept off the top only by the re-release of Bohemian Rhapsody. The song captures the raw energy of a generation that danced for nights on end in abandoned warehouses.