LONDON: Keith Flint, the fiery frontman of British dance-electronic band The Prodigy, was found dead on Monday at his home near London, the band said. He was 49.

Prodigy co-founder Liam Howlett said in an Instagram post that Flint killed himself over the weekend.

“I’m shell shocked ... confused and heart broken,” he wrote. Police confirmed that the body of a 49-year-old man had been found at a home in Brook Hill, northeast of London.

Flint was the stage persona of the band, whose 1990s hits ‘Firestarter’ and ‘Breathe’ were an incendiary fusion of techno, breakbeat and acid house music. He was renowned for his manic stage energy and distinctive look: black eyeliner and hair spiked into two horns.

The Prodigy sold 30 million records, helping to take rave music from an insular community of party-goers to an international audience. They had seven No 1 albums in Britain, most recently with No Tourists in 2018.

The band’s rise coincided with soul-searching in Britain over electronic dance music and its related drug culture, and the Prodigy became known as much for its anti-establishment stance as for its songs.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2019