2024.08.23 – Reading Festival, Reading, England

Date: 23rd August 2024
Event: Reading Festival
Venue: Richfield Avenue
City: Reading
Country: England
Support: see timetable

Tracklist:
1. Breathe
2. Omen
3. Spitfire
4. Firestarter
5. Voodoo People
6. Roadblox
7. Light Up The Sky
8. No Good (Start The Dance)
9. Poison
10. Get Your Fight On
11. Smack My Bitch Up
Encore:
12. Take Me To The Hospital
13. Invaders Must Die
14. Diesel Power
15. We Live Forever
16. Out Of Space

Extra info:
Chevron Stage timetable:
13:40 LeoStayTrill
14:35 Simone
15:30 Killowen
16:25 Sota
17:40 Kenya Grace
18:55 Denzel Curry
20:15 Bou
22:15 The Prodigy
23:30 Zoe London (After Hours)
01:30 Ultimate Power (After Hours)

Review by Jack Rogers, Rock Sound:
The thing is that you don’t just watch The Prodigy live; you experience it. You dive headfirst into the unrelenting madness of it and only pull yourself up for air when the final laser has faded into darkness. It’s a state of mind that these crossover legends have perfected over the last 30 years, and even now, to see them pushing the envelope on how much bigger, bolder and brilliant they can be feels like a real privilege.
The newly built Chevron Stage is made for displays like this, with the iconic ‘Breathe’ and savage ‘Omen’ sounding crisp and crushing in equal measure under the forboding arch. It allows for moments of pure euphoria with ‘Voodoo People’ as intensely grand as ever, whilst ‘Diesel Power’ and ‘Poison’ still feel on the cutting edge of electronic music at its most punishing. Though alongside the mosh-pits and lights filling the night sky, there’s still time for a poignant tribute to someone who isn’t here to soak up the chaos. As ‘Firestarter’ rears its head, given a rampant drum and bass edit, the flickering lasers mould into the shape of Keith Flint’s iconic devil horns, a permanent reminder to always be yourself in a world that so often wants you to conform.
Between the euphoria and the emotion, The Prodigy still feel absolutely untouchable in every way. Timeless, thrilling and representing everything that’s amazing about heavy, unapologetic music, long may they reign.

Review by Jordan Bassett, www.nme.com:
The Prodigy live at Reading Festival 2024: the carnival of mayhem marches on
Little John’s Farm, August 23: the dance titans return to a festival that’s always felt like home, and are determined to honour the late, great Keith Flint
“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.

Poster:

Advert:

Tracklist:

Photos from the show: