Before they get on stage, a staff member barks at the trio; “We don't get many bands here!” He wasn't kidding. The last band that had played at the Four Aces were thrown off stage. The Prodigy weren't.

It's been 20 years since that night. My interviewee, dancer-cum-vocalist Keith Flint, turns 41 this year. Two decades on, he's as croaky as you'd expect. This is the guy who's beasted through hundreds of piercings, thousands of gigs and a severe dependence on prescription drugs, and come out of it grinning ear to ear. He's also astonishingly warm, and impeccably mannered.

“The band has never rehearsed. We never rehearse,” Flint says when asked about the band's formula. “When you believe in something … you've got to get up there and spank it. It matters to us. Every show matters to us. There's never a slack Prodigy gig.”

The pioneering Brits have had no definable hey- day. No rise and fall - only rise. Whilst 1997's ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ went on to infiltrate pop culture to the nth degree (Drew Barrymore? Ok!), their 2009 release, ‘Invaders Must Die’, emphatically smacked its way to #1 in the UK, and top five in innumerable other countries. And whilst they joined the annals of legendary Glastonbury performances when they closed on Friday night in 1995 - last year, they again headlined to rapturous reviews.

Yep - against all odds, The Prodigy are, thus far, ageless.

“Someone said to me in the first year, 'well, you might get a year out of it’,” Flint says, “and I'm still living that first year. You live and breathe this. It feels like it should be. We should still be around. It feels right. We very rarely look back.

“It's the next show, and the show after that,” he emphasises. “It's all about: can you predict your future? And do you want to? Just keep it rolling. Whatever it takes. Keep it rolling.”

And when will it be time to call quits on The Prodigy?

“I couldn't possibly answer that because it's never, ever crossed my mind.”

The Prodigy headline the Future Music Festival, at BRC Doomben, Saturday February 27. You can also catch Keith and Liam at the Gold Coast Convention Centre Thursday March 11.