After 20 years, Keith Flint says the Prodigy still provide bang for fans' bucks, writes Craig Mathieson.

KEITH Flint is many things: singer for the Prodigy, dog lover, the man whose first appearance on British television institution Top of the Pops scared children and an avid motorcyclist. What he is not is someone who is shy about stepping forward.

As the English trio kicked off their ongoing world tour for their fifth album - Invaders Must Die - last September, the tattooed and peroxided vocalist took to facing down anyone who even wondered if time and age was catching up with a performer whose signature track remains the frenetic 1997 hit, Firestarter.

''Some writers say, 'You're getting on, you're an energy band known for your show, you're all approaching 40, have you still got it?','' says Flint, who recently reached that milestone. ''I say to that member of the press, 'Here's my pass - after the show, you come and tell me if I've still got it. If you can bring 10 people who say, 'Listen man, you're showing yourself up and so are the other guys', then I'll listen.''

A theatrical pause, then: ''No one's come backstage with a bad word to say.''

Driving to the studio from his historically listed Essex home - a mock-Tudor house he has restored with his Japanese wife - he's upbeat but not given to musing. It's more than 20 years since Flint met Prodigy founder Liam Howlett at a rave and offered to dance in his live show (Flint's fellow MC Maxim Reality, aka Keith Palmer, joined in 1992) - and he takes the band seriously.

''How do the new tracks sound? It can only sound one way with the Prodigy - vicious, banging and, yeah, incites a riot,'' Flint barks. ''We're always working. It's what we do. With the touring, it's nice to take our energy from stage and keep the studio environment bubbling over.''

The Prodigy were last in Australia about a year ago, previewing the furious hip-hop-derived beats and twisted synths of Invaders Must Die at the Big Day Out.

Releasing albums so infrequently - their previous title was Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned in 2004 - the Prodigy tour each disc extensively. They now return to Melbourne for a headline show and a key slot on the Future Music Festival after 115 gigs in 30 countries.

''The band is in the best place it's ever been,'' Flint insists. ''All aspects are positive. We've remixed a few of the older tracks and we're just keeping things fresh for ourselves by making sure that when a track starts to sit alongside another track, it provokes a new way of hearing it. In the past three or four shows, we've remixed [1994's] Their Law, so that's cool for the crowd and also a buzz for us.''

It wasn't always so harmonious. Rather than Flint and Palmer, Howlett used various guests on Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, creating a rift that threatened to break up the trio. At the time, Flint was depressed and indulging heavily in alcohol and narcotics. He's now clean and sober.

''The band had a fallout of sorts, no more than brothers do, but we're tighter now than many husbands and wives,'' he says. ''We realised that what was setting us apart was people who had a passion for seeing something great crumble. That's where Invaders Must Die comes from - they were invaders; they were infiltrating the Prodigy.

''We're very powerful characters and we all have a job to do that we all do very well,'' Flint says. ''Liam, for example, writes the music and we're happy to say that he's the main man. We want to show people that we understand that he writes the music but none of us doubt our positions.''

For such a distinctive figure, Flint is committed to the group ethos, peppering his sentences with ''we'', not ''I''. Each of his answers is about buttressing the group's standing. He's not boasting, just a true believer.

''Our only reward is the last show we played,'' he says. ''We tore it up, made all the other bands look silly and we left. That's it. That's us.''

I know it´s off-topic, but I don´t wanna open a new topic for this question : What happened to the official Prodigy-homepage ?
If I open it, there is an info about mobile-phone compatiblity and then I can open it. But it´s not the desktop-site, it seems to be the mobile-site for the desktop. No shop. no design, no forum .... what happened ?

I see, if I type theprodigy.com the browser brings me to m.theprodigy.com ???

Everything seems okay to me.

let somebody tell me... we won't have ANY more singiel or or EP from album IMD and we don't have ANY new track from next album ? RWTW competition video was only competition not a forthcoming singiel ?

yea

but there's still a possibility of thunder coming l8r

I do reckon they'll release something later this year tho but it'll probably be in the form of a Live DVD or a stand-alone single or something

I wouldn't mind a 2 track single with Thunder Dubstep/Breathe Dubstep

What you mean when you say stand-alone singiel ? Something like IMD in 2008 ?