The Prodigy & Soft Play, Live at Utilita Arena, Cardiff - 21st November 2023

Life depends upon change and renewal. Whether it’s self-imposed or forced upon you, change is inevitable but it’s how you manage it that matters.

In Soft Play’s case, they’ve dealt with it head-on. The inevitable backlash on Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent’s decision to ditch their old name – which they felt, ‘didn’t represent who we are as people or what our music stands for any longer’ – is covered in pre-emptive, snook-cocking single ‘Punk’s Dead’ which opens tonight’s support slot. Cutting off all criticisms at the pass, its wry sarcasm (delivered with nothing less than sneering virility, as per) is perhaps their finest hour to date (although sadly Robbie Williams is nowhere to be found) and bodes well for what comes next.

Otherwise, they’ve lost no power in the rebrand, with the relentless brutality omnipresent across their no-frills 8-song set which largely draws from debut album Are You Satisfied?.

Both Holman and Vincent have suffered in their personal lives over the last few years, yet that (and their forays as Baby Dave and Larry Pink The Human respectively) have galvanized the duo. During ‘White Knuckle Ride’, Holman apishly jumps into the crowd as if the stage cannot contain him, while later he drily admits: ‘There’s a reason there’s only two of us. When me and Laurie started the band no one else wanted to join. That’s it, really.’

Their visceral ferocity makes them kindred spirits with The Prodigy who, after an impressively high-octane DJ set from Radio One’s Jack Saunders, open with a brief but typically brutal ‘Breathe’, the lowest-key moment in the set.

https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/11/the-prodigy-soft-play-live-cardiff/