Uncontrollable energy: 25 years on, 'The Fat Of The Land' is still a life-changing album

But let’s not forget that record artwork, either. Designed and illustrated by Alex Jenkins during his time as Art Director at XL (this fella would later go on to create iconic covers with the first two albums for The Streets). And speaking of icons... Those back-lit ants in the CD sleeve booklet. And that crab! Have you ever seen a crustacean with as much charisma? And the energy of the colours in that zoomed blur. That's some funky shit.

Of course, the album itself is epic. Uncompromising from its blitzkrieg beginning of ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ and ‘Breathe’. Yet for me, it’s always been that 8 seconds of echoing warehouse-wobble that drops just so insanely into one of my favourite hip hop jams of all time, ‘Diesel Power’, featuring the one and only Kool Keith, blowing your mind “drastically, fantastically”. After those openers it was a masterstroke. A different tempo, a different genre – yet that same raw, uncontrollable energy that The Prodigy bring throughout: from the punk rock guitars of ‘Serial Thrilla’ and ‘Fuel My Fire’ through to the dirty breaks and unmistakeable melody of ‘Mindfields’, and the rave chant of ‘Narayan’.

We're talking about a band who, in the build up to ‘Fat Of The Land’, caused Brixton Academy’s false floor to cave in during a rendition of ‘No Good (Start The Dance)’ in ’96. Whose mosh pits are as wild as they are genuinely friendly (from my experience they knock you down then help you straight back up again). And a band who insist on playing John Paul Young’s ‘Love Is In The Air’ to float you out after every gig.

But does the album stand up today? To say it hasn’t aged would mean I haven’t grown up either. And some of it has. Yet the floor-filling (even floor-caving-in) potential of its big beast singles is as indisputable because they are timeless. And even if, for some, the breaks-driven rollers of ‘Narayan’ and immersive, Eastern thunder-rumble of ‘Climbatize’ take you straight back to a certain time, I dare you to play those tracks nice and loud next to any current jams on your Spotify list and deny their energy hasn’t swelled for two decades like a tidal wave.

But it’s all personal, right? And that’s exactly what this album is to me. I blasted it religiously to wake me up before every exam I ever took. And I’d argue it was the Prodigy's ‘Fat Of The Land’ that got me into Mixmag. Why it felt, when I interviewed them as winners of our Greatest Dance Act Of All Time reader’s poll, and got that album cover signed by my musical heroes, that something had turned a tremendous full circle.

Phil Dudman is a freelance writer. Ask him whether we need butter or guns on Twitter