Keith Flint, vocalist of the British heavy-hitting trio The Prodigy, aimed his not-so-portable, but battery-operated boombox full blast at a 20-foot wall, intent on bouncing the sound back on me. Called a “sound mirror,” the structures were built on the southeast coast of England near the beginning of the 20th century to warn British forces of German invasion by air.

It was also the place where the video for the first single from The Prodigy’s new album Invaders Must Die was filmed.

“These listening towers were set up as kind of early radar to detect invasion. And that was the kind of vibe we wanted,” says Flint.

The Prodigy became an American household name when a decidedly punk rock Flint shaved a strip down the middle of his head, sported a star-spangled Christmas sweater (it was the mid-’90s) and gnashed and gnarled his mascaraed, reverse mohawk-wearing persona across the airwaves with “Firestarter.” — Who are the invaders and why must they die? I think it means something different to each band member. But for me personally, I think that when the band went through some bad times there were very few people who were trying to make the situation better. I don’t know if it was human nature or just British people at their dumbest, or their meanest. When something that’s been successful starts to break up, people like to spend more time going, ‘You know Keith is doing this,’ or ‘You know Maxim’s doing that,’ rather than saying, ‘Hey, man, why don’t we all go out to dinner and you guys get together and look at the history that you’ve got amongst yourselves?’ They were the invaders to me.

— The Prodigy hasn’t put out a studio album as the complete band that it started off as in over 10 years. What have you been doing since then? Liam [Howlett, the band’s composer/programmer] put out what could be best described as a solo album [Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned], although officially that was a Prodigy album. But we took that album back into the studio and we reworked a lot of the tracks so that me and Maxim could do them live… and we toured that, as much as it seems like, when you talk about specific times, from Fat of the Land to now, there wasn’t any studio time with the band.

You know, we were constantly touring.

— So you stayed busy. You keep yourself busy, always, and a lot of partying as well, you know.

— Do you see any difference in the rave scene that you started out in? It’s so very different now… The English rave scene was all about breaking into warehouses — a very renegade approach. That’s pretty much finished now. It’s very much a club culture now. And I think that’s how it is in the States now; it’s more of a club culture. But hey, if there’s a massive rave scene that’s really kicking off and I don’t know about it, good on you.

— What would you say to those who question The Prodigy’s relevance in music today? That would be someone who hasn’t come to a show in six, eight months. Because if they came to a show, they couldn’t honestly say that.

— Do you feel like a relevant part of The Prodigy? You aren’t a songwriter and don’t produce any of the music — who are you in terms of the band? That’s something that I don’t have to qualify to people. I am not the major music writer, I am just a dancer. I am the stage diver who never got thrown off—that’s me, I’m one of the crowd. I jumped on stage one day and never got thrown off. So that’s my job. And fuck, I love it. I think a band or anything that works is like a recipe.

Sometimes you bake a cake or make pasta and all you need is a pinch of salt; without the salt, it doesn’t taste so good, but with salt, it’s a fucking hell of a dish. The band — we don’t feel like we have to qualify our positions . My opinion in that studio and Maxim’s opinion in that studio is respected.

— What do you think of your name being used synonymously as being broke among English youth (Keith Flint/Skint)? I mostly laugh. It’s brilliant. I don’t really care.

— Just another way for you to infuse popular culture or society?

I spent my life as a kid making a show of myself. It makes me laugh because I’m still like a virus, which makes me infectious. — jared morgan