The band who are no one's prodigy

They are the kind of boys you would only take home to meet your mother if you wanted to give her a heart attack. The Prodigy, comprising four lads from Essex, England, can be shocking, controversial and downright scary.

The Prodigy are actually Liam Howlett, who writes all the group's songs, frontman Keith Flint (recognisable by his studded tongue, trademark snarl and twin-horned green mohican hair style), rapper Maxim Reality and dancer Leeroy Thornhill.

'Nah, we're not scary at all,' growled Maxim over the telephone from London. 'In the beginning, we used to dress up and dance, we went through that stage where dancing meant dressing up and all that. But we're not scary.

'When I'm on stage there's another side of me that comes out. It's not an act. I'm just expressing myself and the people in the crowd have given me that opportunity to do so. It's freedom of expression and performing taken to another level. I don't keep that image off stage. When I'm offstage I lock that image away in a box.' The two extremes can apply to their music as well. The band has been described by critics as 'noise manna from heaven' and the experience of listening to their music has been compared with 'being trapped in a dustbin and being rolled off a clifftop'. They have been called 'the future of rock and roll' and the 'most brilliant band of the decade'.

What Howlett's music sounds like is a lot of heavy metal samplers bashed together with drums, breakbeats, guitar riffs and rather demented vocals (courtesy of Flint and Maxim).

The Prodigy's music has defied labelling though critics have conveniently lumped them together with other acts that are similar and yet not so. The one label that ruffles The Prodigy's feathers is 'electronica' or 'techno'. Howlett has often ranted about how his influences came from grunge bands like Nirvana and ska groups instead of the techno-pop Kraftwerk.