In 1997, Keith Flint was very confused. After a long youth dancing in English rural barns (literally—his local club in Essex was called The Barn), the band he sang for was breaking America. With its third album, The Fat of the Land, led by the massive singles “Firestarter” and “Breathe,” The Prodigy became the first of the 1990s British dance acts to cross the Atlantic. In a Spin magazine cover story, Flint, who died this week at the age of 49, described his bafflement at the way British rave culture was being translated for Americans. People seemed to “think it’s about the internet, the future, technology, play stations—and it isn’t!” he said.

The story of how The Prodigy came to symbolize a kind of techno-dystopian darkness says as much about the late 1990s as the band itself. The Prodigy had been famous in Britain since 1991, when their debut song “Charly” flooded dance floors across the nation. The song sampled an informational broadcast instructing listeners to “always tell your mummy before you go off somewhere” over a neat little breakbeat and some noises like lasers gone haywire, in between meows from a cartoon cat. Back then, The Prodigy was sometimes derided as “kiddie-techno,” because of their juvenile samples and because the teens loved them. Britain’s rave scene was an all-ages affair, with day-glo clothes everywhere, smiley faces, and pacifiers for the gurners.

Flint started out as the band’s dancer, à la Bez from the Happy Mondays, but ended up as frontman. With the twin spears of his hairdo thrust forward, his wide boy vocals grated over Liam Howlett’s clean production, a bloody smear against glass. In videos he bared his teeth and banged his head, eyes rolling. He really was a sight.

Flint had met Howlett at a rave in 1989. Flint asked him for a mixtape, which he returned along with a few of his own songs. The pair were also friends with Leeroy Thornhill, a dancer like Flint, adept at a beautifully old-school shuffle. They added MC Maxim and a singer named Sharky, and The Prodigy was born. (Members would leave and join as the years wore on.) The band got popular so quickly that Howlett had to prove he hadn’t sold out by anonymously releasing two stonking records, the delicious “Earthbound 1” and “Earthbound 2.” DJs sniffed when they found out that Howlett of “Charly” fame had cut the records, but they safeguarded his reputation.

The Earthbound records went on to form part of The Prodigy’s second album, Music for the Jilted Generation, but it was only with Fat of the Land that the band truly became huge. By that time Flint had gotten a makeover, shaving off part of his hair and generally acting like a bit of a psychopath. But the real change was the way that The Prodigy was received in America.