#AONO20: Warning · 20th Anniversary

Exactly twenty years ago, on the 1st of October 2004, Warning was premiered live by The Prodigy at a gig in Greece. In honour of this anniversary, we tell the full story of the legendary ‘Warning’ / ‘First Warning’ – the tune that had a rather difficult fate!

Warning story began back in autumn 2004. Officially, Liam mentioned this track for the first time on September 4 in his blog.

Liam H: i am back in the studio writing a new tune with keef and maxim ,its fast and relentless.the fastest tune ive ever done!

A bit later, just before the live ‘Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned’ tour started, Liam confirmed that the track is finished now and will definitely be played live. The official title is ‘Warning’, and the one and only Keef Flint does the vocals.

Liam H: i have just finished a brand new tune with keef called ‘warning’ .its off the hook and its gonna take peoples heds off! we will be playing it in greece at our first gig on the 1st oct. also just finished sorting out the live set and its firing…..aono re-pumped.

Anyway, ‘Warning’ was premiered live at the first gig of the ‘AONO’ tour, in Athens on October 1, 2004 — since then, the track became a permanent part of the live show and did not drop out of the live setlist until 2008. Being interviewed by Neko on September 24, 2004, Liam lifted the veil of mystery about the new banger.

Neko: You also said that there was a new track with Maxim and Keith, which was the fastest track you had ever done. Is this the same as ‘Warning’?

 

Liam H: Yeah, it’s the same track. It started off with 175bpm, but its now 166bpm. We all were in the studio to rock it, and Keef seemed to have the vocals covered on his own. It wasn’t like “ok both will have to do lyrics”, because it often just complicates things and I wanted it to be simple to rock it live for people to get it first time they hear it.

According to insiders, ‘Warning’ was the last track Howlett wrote at Reason, and although it was sung by Keef on a regular basis, the studio vocals for the track were never recorded. But somehow it was in the plans, as this banger was planned to be released several times during those 4 years. However, only the sound of the instrumental had time to change during this period. The very first version of the track was played from the beginning of the 2004 ‘AONO’ tour until June 2005 and was only recorded on the professional video of the Pinkpop Festival, but in a rather poor quality. We decided to make a small remaster of this video and sound so that you can enjoy this very first version of the track.

It’s also worth mentioning that after this first version of ‘Warning’, a short live-jam made of samples of the track was almost always played at performances. As it turned out later, this jam even had a name – Wooo Link. It appeared on the tracklist picture in the booklet of ‘Their Law’ compilation. And that triple “O” is there for a reason – the meaning of the name refers to Keef’s shouts – “Wooornin’“, while a double would read as “wuu”.

It was supposedly this version that was initially planned for release as a single and later as a B-side. But suddenly in the middle of 2005 Liam completely renewed the sound of the track, making it closer to the live vibe than to the electronic one…

It was due to the fact that Liam found the right atmosphere for live performances, which worked well for the band at that time — now on the stage, The Prodigy turned toward the mixture of punk and drum’n’bass. The main trick of this style mixture is a fast drum’n’bass beats based on live dirty drums sampling, — this type of sound was just coming into fashion at the time and contained non-trivial punk or even garage-rock attitude. In 2004-2005 D&B type of music had just entered the dance mainstream and was played in almost all big venues.

Liam was infected with this idea in the beginning of 2005, just before the ‘Spitfire’ single was released: Howlett was absolutely thrilled by Nightbreed’s remix of the title track. On the 16 February LH shared his thought about this killing tune in his blog.

Liam H: hey peoples–.NITEBREED hav just done a badass mix of spitfire.if u heard that pack of wolves track they did last year it will give u an idea of the sound– drum and bass punk rock .its of the wall. so 3 versions will be on the release. mine, ffs and this bomb.

‘Spitfire’ remixed by Nightbreed influenced Master H quite hugely: after ‘Warning’ was remade, another track with a similar sound appeared in The Prodigy’s live set. It was called ‘Wake The Fuck Up’ and became one of Liam’s permanent favorites for the gigs, — curiously, it sampled Nightbreed Remix directly.

A little after, numerous clones of ‘Warning’ and Nightbreed’s ‘Spitfire’ were born: easy to remember ‘Run With The Wolves’, ‘Who The Fuck Is Eddy Cohran’, ‘Spitfast’, ‘Roadblox’, ‘Champions Of London’, and others.

This new version of ‘Warning’, even before the official release, does not seem to have included vocals at all. In the licence databases it was registered as a separate track called New Warning and Keef was no longer listed as co-writer of the track, even though he continued to perform it until 2008. Probably Liam already knew that the official release would be an instrumental.

This way or another, the tune was officially remixed by the Backstage Sluts and surprisingly their version contained Keef’s studio vocals! The remix was broadcasted on XFM on Sunday, 29 May 2005.

You ask – where did the vocals come from if they weren’t recorded with Liam? The thing is that one of Backstage Sluts members, Jason Laurence Cohen, was also a member of Clever Brains Fryin’ – side project, where Keef was also involved. And apparently, it was on Keef’s initiative that the guys made a remix for a possible single. Actually vocals they also specially recorded in the studio for the remix together with Keef.

Later, the guys from Backstage Sluts posted their ‘Warning’ remix on MySpace, and clarified some details in PM (credit goes to Etienne Lebon):

Backstage Sluts: It was a rough remix we did – its still needs finishing, we wrote some extra lyrics to it – so were not sure if it will see the light of day.

They also announced that this track was even meant for official release, but unfortunately, it did not happen. Most likely it was about the ‘Warning’ single, where the remix was planned to be released. As we can remember, ‘Warning’ had been considered as a candidate for a single during 2005, and Liam himself mentioned this fact a couple of times.

Liam H: i have new traks like wake up full vocal version ,warning and ded ken but they r all potential singles after spitfire so they wont be on b-side. way it is remixes and spitfire mixes will b!

Nevertheless, the separate release was not destined to happen. A year later, being interviewed by Neko summer of 2006 Liam mentioned that the track plans to be released as the official movie score.

Neko: How about ‘Warning’, you’ve been playing that live for almost 2 years now?

 

Liam H: ‘Warning’ is a good live track, Warning instrumental is going on a film which I can’t talk about yet. It is an “in-between albums” track. I’ve put it on a film, really cool. It is actually a British film with American actors in. It’s about all these hitmen that are trying to attack this place at one time. But it is still under wraps so I can’t tell you much about it really.

Gradually information became more definite: a few months later ‘Warning’ was officially announced as the soundtrack to the Smokin’ Aces movie. At the same time, it was reported that the track would be released as First Warning and it would definitely not contain Keef’s vocals.

Only more attentive listeners may notice that ‘First Warning’ is essentially the 3rd version of the track, as it is slightly different even from the updated 2005 version, and seems the track sounds a bit simpler. For what purpose the track was remade a third time and why the 2005 version wasn’t good enough for the soundtrack is unknown. But it’s also worth noting that ‘First Warning’ was not just one of the tracks of the official OST: it was also used as a score, i.e. as audio background for some of the action scenes. The score version of the ‘First Warning’ is really different from the officially released one. The score mix has some additional elements that didn’t make the cut into the final version — apparently, Liam added additional samples to the pack to diversify the sound for wider use by Clint Mansell, the film’s sound engineer, when editing the background music.

Clint Mansell: I can tell you this much…I’m pretty sure First Warning is the new track by The Prodigy. Liam gave me elements of the song which I worked into the movie-it plays as the theme for these nazis called The Tremor Brothers! I haven’t heard this finished version yet but the elements that I had sounded awesome! Vintage Prodigy!

We asked Clint to clarify some of the details of his work on the soundtrack, and here’s what he had to say.

Clint Mansell for All Souvenirs: I spoke with Liam about it. We reached out to see if he had anything that we could use. He was totally gracious, he even re-recorded the track in a different key so it would integrate smoothly with the score. It seems likely that I edited the track to picture using stems that Liam provided, but I really can’t remember now. We didn’t get together in the studio though.

The score version of the track consisted of four different variations, three of which were even later officially released on the score-compilation under Clint’s own authorship and with titles referring to scenes from the movie. So, for example, the short Warning’s edit for the teaser is called 1m6, the other two are named: F.B.I. Task Force Moves In and 5m38.

A year later, in 2008, ‘First Warning’ will be used as the soundtrack again, this time for ‘Need For Speed: Undercover’, and in 2023 for ‘Role Play’ movie.

Despite the fact that the official release of ‘Warning’ ended up being an instrumental one, the full Keith Flint vocal version still saw the light of day, albeit not in-studio sound. Of course, we are talking about the ‘World’s On Fire’ blu-ray 2011 release: that’s where you can watch ‘Warning‘ performed live at T In The Park in 2008 filmed by Paul Dugdale, — needless to say, it was with Keef’s vocals on it!

2008 was the last in such a long history of the legendary ‘Warning’, which was then replaced by its clone called ‘Run With The Wolves’. Why a clone, you ask? More likely ‘Run With The Wolves’ was recorded conceptually based on ‘Warning’ as a fresher replacement for the upcoming new album. ‘Run With The Wolves’ itself also used some elements from ‘Warning’. Moreover, in the working setlist of ‘Invaders Must Die’ LP and also in the live setlists both tracks were listed as a kind of common track: Warning/Run or Warning/Mug.

Also worth mentioning is the ancient rumor that the earliest demo of “pre-Warning” was rebuilt from ‘Nuclear’ — presumably, a snippet of this early demo played on The Prodigy’s 2005 website.

Headmasters: SIXSHOT
Additional thanks to: Split, Rapraiz, Clint Mansell

SBER (RUS): 89213941б98

Liked it? Take a second to support All Souvenirs on Patreon!
Get more articles and high quality audio restorations.