Incubus
“Fucking pretty boy pussy dickwad douchebag assmonger.” – Me
“Alright, that’s it. I’m boycotting your site.” – Al
Albums Reviewed:
Incubus and
System of a Down are the only bands pegged as “nu-metal” that I can honestly
say I like. I LOVE
System of a Down and only “kinda like” Incubus, but I like them nonetheless. I honestly don’t fucking know why I have all
three of their major-label albums, and why, on top of that, I’ve had them for
like two years, but I do, so I might as well review ‘em, eh? They’re a nice band. I think that, with their third album, they’re
really starting to find their sound, and maybe in another album or two I’ll
like ‘em a lot, but for now they’re just a nice band. They started out fun and funky, then sold out
to generic nu-metal, and now they’re sort of a modern, metal-ish (but not
really) equivalent of that whole relaxed,
Now for the lineup. The pretty boy in the front with the tie on is Brandon Boyd, as you all know. He used to be this messy, dirty dude with dreadlocks. But now he’s a pretty boy pussy like John Mayer or something. Eh. He has a good voice, and actually sings more often than not instead of shouting or rapping like a fuckhead, which is nice. The little guy with the red afro is guitarist Mike Einziger, and the other three guys are bassist Dirk Lance (there’s a pornstar name if there ever was one!), drummer Jose Pasillas, and turntable guy DJ Lyfe (I have a hunch that’s not his real name). I don’t know who of them is who. And if you haven’t either a) heard S.C.I.E.N.C.E. or b) seen a video of theirs, you wouldn’t even know they had a turntable guy. You can barely tell he’s there on their last two albums. Also, apparently, says the All Music Guide, Dirk Diggler recently left the band and they now have a new bassist named Ben Kenney, but he hasn’t played on any of their albums yet, so fuck him.
Aaaaaaaaanyhoo,
they actually have an album before S.C.I.E.N.C.E. called Fungus
Amongus that I’m not reviewing because I didn’t know it existed until like
a week ago, and it’s so random and obscure I doubt I’ll ever be able to find
it. Not that I’ll try or anything. They also have an E.P. called Enjoy
Incubus that I’m not reviewing
because it’s a fucking E.P., and Homey don’t play that.
And, onto the reviews!
craig.barry3@ntlworld.com writes:
Hi,
Just wanna say something:
INCUBUS RULE! All that crap
you wrote about about them in your review of them was rubbish. At least
How long ago did u write the review? Have u heard their new album that rocks and all.
Anyways youve got quite a
cool site. I love system of a down too:
S.C.I.E.N.C.E. (1997)
Rating: 7
Best Song:
“Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song)”
If I could use one word to describe this record, it would be “neat.” This album is neat. It’s not great, or life-altering, or whatever. Just neat. Incubus get pegged as nu-metal, and I guess some of the choruses to the songs here could validate that point, but the influence I see here more than anything else is early sex-funk-metal Red Hot Chili Peppers. Only minus the sex part. The lyrics here sound like Brandon Boyd thinks they’re profound, but they often come out just sounding stupid. Take, for instance, the first few lines of the opener, “Redefine:” “Imagine your brain as a canister filled with ink. Now think of your body as the pen where the ink resides. Use the two, KAPOW! What are you now? You’re the human magic marker!”
Wow, um…deep, dude…
Ofcourse, pretty boy Brandon (who wasn’t pretty yet when this album came out) delivers a lot of his profound ruminations on life in this half-singing faux-funk-rap delivery that makes about 90% of them completely indecipherable. So the fact that they’re stupid doesn’t make a goddamn difference. What matters is the music, which, like I said, is NEAT. Some of the choruses sound like “nu-metal” or whatever, but 1) they often have an actual vocal hook in them, instead of bullshit screaming and/or rapping, and 2) they’re fast, energetic, and neat. Plus, the verses of all these songs are cool as MY ASS. Funky, trippy, sound-effect-y goodness. Lots of bongos and weird synths and percussion just jerking in and out with very little rhyme or reason. Strange samples. They actually USE their turntable DJ guy to GOOD EFFECT frequently, unlike the next album, where you rarely ever hear the sumbitch.
The first five tunes here might as well be the same song, but they’re all COOL. They all follow the same blueprint (neat, funky as HELL verse music with Brandon faux-rapping his weird “profound” bullshit yet not somehow not sounding like a jackass, contrasted by fast, metallic choruses that sound sorta like nu-metal but don’t suck all that much, so there must be a difference somewhere). After this is where the album starts to take a few jerky left turns, as the next tune is a WEIRD instrumental thingy called “Magic Medicine” where the “lyrics” are a repeated sample of an annoying middle-aged woman saying “On this page, you see a little girl giggling at a hippopotamus. I wonder why?” I think this thing is pretty neat, actually. I mean, it has no musical merit, and no reason to exist, and it’s essentially a novelty. But it’s NEAT. You see? NEAT!
The second half
of the album alternates between scuzzy Korn-metal crap (apparently the band ran
out of vocal melodies to put in their fast, metal choruses and asked
Like I said, the other four tracks sound suspiciously like scuzzy Korn-metal crap, but only the closer “Calgone” is truly hideous. The others are sorta kinda OK because the verses are still the neatest things I’ve ever heard by a supposed “nu-metal” band outside of just about every song System of a Down has ever written. Oh, and “Calgone” goes on for like an extra ten minutes after the song’s finished, but there’s no need to listen to any of that crap, because you could spend that ten minutes listening to “And You And I” or “Sound Chaser” or something. YES IS A GREAT BAND!!!! Far superior to Incubus. Though Incubus is pretty OK, too.
Make Yourself (1999)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Stellar”
This is the only one of Incubus’ three albums for which I would not argue with the tag of “nu-metal.” Not surprisingly, then, it’s the worst. Now, it’s still OK, and Incubus has MUCH more melodic sense and creativity (though you couldn’t tell that they have much creativity from THIS record…) than more or less any other band they’re supposed to be competing with (except System of a Down, who beats Incubus so far into the ground they come out in fucking Beijing). Therefore, despite the fact that it smells a bit TOO much of “generic nu-metal crap,” it’s OK. I mean, I could barely even call it “good,” but it’s OK, I guess. This record doesn’t really excite me all that much, though.
See, it would be too easy to trash this thing as “generic nu-metal bullshit crap,” because (even though it is) it’s BETTER than about 98% of other “generic nu-metal bullshit crap.” 6 is no rating to get all that excited about, but you gotta understand: even though I’m biased towards bands from like the early-mid nineties, I’m biased against this whole 2000’s nu-metal scene. So if I give a record that has “generic nu-metal bullshit crap” written all over it a technically positive rating (a 6 would equal the “very hesitant thumbs up” in the Ebert and Roeper rating system), that means the band actually knows what the fuck they’re doing, and knows how to WRITE SONGS that actually aren’t that bad, despite the fact that they’re generic nu-metal bullshit crap.
And a lot of this record is, despite being pretty decent. About 90% of all of that fucking NEAT crazy nonsensical verse shit that made S.C.I.E.N.C.E. a good record is contained in the astonishingly uninteresting instrumental “Battlestar Scralatchtica,” and, except for a handful of other songs (the opener “Privilege” is neat and funky, and there are a few P-P-P-POP songs toward the second half that sound absolutely nothing like nu-metal), the rest contains that oh-so-boring “loud, crunchy, fuzzy nu-metal guitar playing an uninteresting riff and/or chord sequence” that you all know and love SO MUCH that it makes you immediately change the radio station whenever that new Linkin Park song comes on. The thing is, only two of these songs (“When It Comes” and “Out From Under”) blow like you’d expect (and BOY, do they…), and the rest is actually OK, even if a good bit is boring and uninteresting. I enjoy that sitar part in “Nowhere Fast” and (SHOCKING!!!) the nu-metal-sounding singles (“Pardon Me” and “Stellar”) are quite good. I especially enjoy “Stellar.” Good fucking song, that one is. “Meet…me…in…outerrrrr space.” Cool fucking stuff. I like the title track OK, too, even if the “I’LL FUCK ME IN MY OWN WAY!!” line might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
The P-P-P-POP songs are cool, too. I actually like “Drive” (SO FUCKING SUE ME!!) even if the “with open arms and open eyes, yeah…” part of the chorus makes me shudder at its incredible badness. And was “I Miss You” a single? It sounds like it should have been. It’s OK, I guess (pretty!), even if it’s in need of about 200 shots of adrenaline. The lyrics are pretty trite, as well. I like the pop songs on the last album a lot more than the ones on this one, if you hadn’t already figured that out already, by the way.
Oh, and the lyrics suck. I mean, they SUCK. Big fat balls of ball-sucking suck. I already addressed the lines in the title
track and “Drive” that make me cringe, but how about an especially
horrible line in the all-around horrible “Out From Under?” “To resist is to piss in the wind! Anyone who does will end up smelling!” Now, I understand what pretty boy
I really don’t like this album all that much. If pressed to give a black/white yes/no answer, I’d give a very partial recommendation (since this is about 100 times better than most any other generic nu-metal album you’re ever likely to hear), and hence the 6 up there, but, except for a handful of damn solid tunes, there’s not too much to like here (although only two songs are really bad). This record is just “not all that neat.”
Morning View (2001)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Nice To Know You”
You
know what? People, especially fans of
“modern rock,” are morons. You hear
me? FUCKING MORONS. You know why?
Well, the amount of times I saw this record called a “sellout” in
various places is damn near astronomical, and that
shows just how narrow-minded these people are.
You see, “sellout,” to them, means “softer,” or something. But that is just so fucking wrong I
don’t even know where to begin. Sellout
does NOT equal soft. Sellout = doing the
same goddamn generic thing everyone else is doing when you had been unique
beforehand. Make Yourself was a
Sellout, with a capital “S.” Morning
View is NOT, and NEVER WAS a sellout.
If David Gray were to make a record that sounded suspiciously like
Anyway, now that my rant is out of the way, back to the record at hand, and this is easily the best Incubus record you’ll find up to this point, principally because they (mostly) leave the generic nu-metal bullshit crap of the last record far, FAR behind. Sure, about half these songs have heavy guitars in them, but “heavy guitars” does not in itself mean “nu-metal.” Heavy guitars used in the same utterly uninteresting way as every other band on modern rock radio means “nu-metal.” For instance, I would classify “Have You Ever” and “Under My Umbrella” as “nu-metal,” and both of those songs are fucking horrible. “Blood on the Ground” is no great shakes either, and the lead single “I Wish You Were Here” has never impressed me all that much (GREAT verses, but terrible guitar tone in the chorus), but the rest of the tunes here are A-OK by me! There’s a sort of a laid-back beach California vibe going on throughout the record, sort of like the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ (again!) last two records, only with a mixture of heavy guitars and acoustics instead of 70 minutes of John Frusciante overdubbing his voice over itself 600 times (which is basically what the entire By The Way album is). A few songs have strings added (e.g. “Just a Phase”). The last track is a completely out-of-place sounding thing with far-eastern string instruments and crickets chirping for no reason. It’s cool, I reckon, but it seems ridiculously tacked-on and just doesn’t mesh with the rest of the album at all. Still cool, though. And it’s called “Aqueous Transmission.” Apparently they picked that over its alternate title, “Jizzm.”
But that aside, I like this record a whole bunch because it shows that these guys are just not comfortable being some random nu-metal crap act. They’re growing as a band here. It’s MILES more diverse than their other two records. Just a lot of really cool, melodic, well-written, well-crafted songs that don’t rely on the same generic bullshit tricks on modern rock radio that every other band uses (except, again, System of a Down, who are still about 100 times as good as these guys, remember). The band must have said to themselves, “Hey! You know what? We actually know how to write songs! Why are we doing this nu-metal bullshit?” and then acted accordingly. Like I said, about half the album still has heavy guitars on it (and a lot of those songs are among the weakest on the record, ofcourse), but “Nice to Know You” and “Circles,” the first two songs on the record, are so much more fucking creative than so much of the crap you’ll find nowadays. I mean, what other “nu-metal” band could write something as melodic, catchy, well-crafted, and just awesome as “Nice to Know You?” Not even System of a Down, because they rely so much on weirdness and uniqueness. They couldn’t even write that song. And the guitar riff in “Circles” is just cool. Are there goofy time signatures in there? Sure sounds like it! System of a Down could probably write that song, and do it better, but Serj would like yodel throughout the whole thing or some shit, so maybe it’s better they don’t.
The middle
of the record (aside from the mediocre “Blood on the Ground”) is where it
becomes clear that these guys KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE DOING. I love “Just a Phase,” because it
almost seems like they’re toying with the douchebag retards who only
like something if it has heavy guitars in it.
It’s basically acoustics and strings, but it keeps building, until
pretty boy
This band knows what they’re
doing. They know how to fucking write a
good pop song. And the lyrics don’t even
suck this time! They’re not poetry or
anything, but better than “I’LL FUCK ME IN MY OWN WAY!!!” in any case. Even if a handful of songs still smack of
generic bullshit nu-metal crap, most of the material here is far from
that. This is a very good record. No System of a Down or anything, but in terms
of bands that people who get paid to do what I do much better for free call
“nu-metal,” I’ll rate them a solid #2. Even if a
A Crow Left Of The Murder (2004)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “A Crow Left Of The Murder”
That’s it.
With this horribly, horribly, horribly
titled album (I understand that a
group of crows is called a “murder,” but that doesn’t mean the name of this
album doesn’t suck orangutan dong), Incubus is now a band worthy of your
respect. You don’t have to enjoy them
(even though I do), but you have to at least respect them, forever
revoking their membership in the “general nu-metal club” (which was really iffy
in the first place), and placing them in the “interesting new rock music club,”
along with, oh, I dunno, GOOD bands.
One thing you gotta respect about
Incubus, besides the fact that they’re writing some consistently impressive
material at this point, is that they just don’t make the same album twice. Morning
View was like laid-back Red Hot
Chili Peppers SoCal happy rock that happened to have heavy guitars in it. Make
Yourself was as fucking generic
and predictable as a pimple on a teenager, but it still had bunch of good
songs. S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was just
weird. Fungus Amongus I don’t
actually have. A Goose Left of the Gaggle, then, is aggressive, less-dependent on
heavy guitar sludge, and overtly political (sometimes TOO overtly, like the
“You’re no Jesus! Yeah, you’re no
fucking Elvis!” bullshit line in “Megalomaniac,” which has less subtlety than Rosie
O’Donnell in a buffet line). And before
I leave this topic behind and concentrate on all the cool music splattered
throughout the record, let me say that not many administrations could make a
band go from the vibe all over Morning
View to making a CENSORED (it’s
only being shown like late at night) video featuring a flying Adolf Hitler and
a George W. Bush look-a-like intercut in a quite jarring and disconcerting
manner. This is what happens when you
have bigoted, unethical war-hawks running the country. You get Brandon Boyd trying to write
political lyrics like “if I met you in a scissor fight, I’d cut off both your
wings on principle alone!” This helps no
one. Except maybe the
scissor people.
Anyway, the music. The band hired Pearl Jam’s producer to
produce the record, which to be honest I don’t give a flying frig about, but it
does show that they want to be taken seriously as artists now, or at least as seriously as
Pearl Jam. The record has its softer
moments (the smooth and thoughtful “Agoraphobia,” with probably the best lyrics
here and a GREAT harmony part near the end, the love song to Brandon’s
supermodel girlfriend (bastard…) “Southern Girl,” the haunting piano thing
“Here in My Room”), but for the most part they set the band to “AGGRESSIVE
ROCK” much more so than the previous album, because such a laid-back vibe
wouldn’t jive too well with the pissed-off nature of a lot of these songs. “Megalomaniac,” which like an asshole steals its title from one of Black Sabbath’s best tracks and adds a
“c” to the end, is the lead track and first single, and it’s
a nice song, but I think it just got put there because it sounds EXACTLY like a
lot of previous Incubus tunes, just a little angrier. Didn’t wanna scare off the
fan-base. There are PLENTY of
better songs here. The title track is my
personal favorite, and its manic “From here on it’s
instinctual! Even straight
roads…MEANDER!!!!” chorus is completely unlike any melody heard before,
and thus it fucking rules my ass. I
don’t have a damn clue what
Moving on, the prog-influenced middle duo of “Sick Sad Little World”
(Incubus’ first try at an “epic” at 6 and a half minutes) and “Pistola” (which
has one of the coolest damn guitar solos I’ve ever heard in my life) and the
kooky “Zee Deveel” are some damn fine compositions, too, dad-gummit, and they
sound like nothing the band has done before.
They’re clearly trying on this album. Hard. Mike
Einziger’s guitar playing has become about 100 times more sophisticated and
varied than on previous records, and instead of staying slaves to that “cool,
messed-up interesting verse followed by heavy, fuzzy guitar chords in chorus”
pattern they’ve followed on their other albums (when they weren’t being balladeers
or writing slick pop songs), Mike’s coming up with all sorts of interesting
lead lines and tones and bullshit that I’m not gonna explain because I know
crap about playing the guitar. It sounds more intelligent and impressive, at least. Except for “Megalomaniac,” where the guitars
sound about the same, “Made for TV Movie,” where the guitars sound like some
sludgy bullshit Staind band crossed with Siamese Dream-era
Smashing Pumpkins in their crushing, fuzzy heaviness, and maybe a couple of the
songs I don’t like and thus don’t remember the guitar tone for, there’s not
much distortion in his playing, and he’s concentrating on playing NOTES. Interesting and cool lead
parts consisting of well-thought-out sequences of NOTES. Like in the title track, for instance. Sometimes he actually sounds like John
Frusciante (Ha! Worked a Peppers analogy
referring to this album into the review!
*Checks off “work Peppers analogy referring to this album into
review”*), but he plays more notes, isn’t afraid to kick some solid ass when
needed, and enjoys making his solos sound like an exploding fax machine some of
the time (well, what do YOU think the solo in “Pistola” sounds like?).
There are a few stinkers here (“Smile Lines” does absolutely nothing
for me, the closer “Leech” is fucking stupid, and “Priceless” is COMICALLY
awful), but the overall effect is, as you would think from the rating I typed
in above, a positive one, and Mike even throws a cool, forked-out guitar solo
into “Priceless” to make at least 20 or so seconds of that song not completely blow my ass. In any case, I think these
guys can count me as a solid fan now, even if
Light Grenades (2006)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Oil And
Water”
I
like how I had completely forgotten Incubus existed until I went to Metacritic
one day and saw a bunch of reviews up for their new album. Didn’t I call myself a “solid fan” in the
review of their last one? Didn’t I
review them within like the first six months I had this site up? Am I that fickle? Or is TV’s fault? I mean, I see a listing for “Aqua Teen Hunger
Force” on the guide and I think to myself “Hey!
That show’s funny! But can I
really sit still for ten minutes?” Speaking
of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, maybe I should start a guerrilla marketing campaign
for this website and stick devices with neon outlines of my face under a number
of bridges in the Boston area. Perhaps
underneath I could write “Brad’s Completely Useless Record Reviews is the BOMB!” and put “BOMB!” in a font much
larger than the rest of the text. I
don’t see how anyone could possibly misinterpret this gesture, do you?
Anyway, Light Grenades is a very apt title for this record in that it
sounds exactly like A Crow Left of the
Murder, only “lighter” (which means so much for Incubus never making the
same album twice, I suppose). If the
political focus isn’t entirely gone when compared to A Goose Left of the Gaggle, it’s greatly toned town and much less “IN YOUR FACE!!!” than the last record,
which could either be because the band decided it might not have been the best
idea to give their lead single a video MTV wouldn’t play, or because the whole
political focus on A Herpes Outbreak Left
of the Whorehouse was a “phase,” like when David Bowie had a “phase” where
he thought it’d be a good idea to go on stage in a white leisure suit and take
a ninety-minute dump. It’s there, but only if you look at the
lyrics and disregard songs like “Diamonds and Coal” and “Love Hurts” (did you
know that love hurts, but sometimes it’s a “good hurt?” Me neither!
My, the things you can learn from Brandon Boyd…). What the band has carried over from what’s still their career peak is that Mike
Einziger is relying less and less on heavy, distorted guitar riffs and more and
more on interesting, tricky lead lines.
The only song with the trademark Incubus “grinding riffage” is “Kiss to
Send Us Off,” placed right smack dab at the beginning and right before the
pseudo-pussy pseudo-ballads like “Dig” and “Love Hurts” that feel like they
dominate the first half of the album even though there are only two of
them. “Love Hurts” is just corny (that
thing I put in the parenthesis back there is the chorus! I’m serious!), but I’ll throw my support
behind “Dig” as a good example of this new, “light” Incubus, if only because
Brandon’s voice still sounds fantastic, especially in the “better part of
meeeeeeeeee!” chorus line thingymadoo.
The echoey guitar stuff almost sounds vaguely U2-ish, which is something
I never thought I’d say about this
band.
After the fast-because-we-need-a-crappy-disorganized-short-fast-one title track, the profoundly mediocre “acoustic, then randomly pseudo-industrial” “Earth to Bella, Pt. 1” splits the album very neatly up into two halves, and I’m here to say that if you find yourself halfway through this record with thoughts such as “Wow, this is boring,” or “wow, the stuff that’s not boring is pretty average and uninventive,” have no fear! Despite my moderate support for “Dig” and “Anna Molly” (which I haven’t mentioned yet; cool guitar lines in there), I always think that kind of stuff too, but the second half is really good! Still no different than their last album except being “lighter,” but just more interesting, varied, and occasionally rocking stuff. My favorite is almost epic-sounding “Oil and Water,” complete with a guitar intro that again vaguely reminds me of a U2 with a little more distortion and a little less echo, a pounding tom drum entrance, and strings and bells and crap in the chorus, during which Brandon with full force yells out “DYYYYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!! CRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!!!” and the rest of the band even do harmonizing backup vocals! I full well expect some people to hate this song due to its self-conscious “bigness,” but I for one am impressed a) that they went for something like this and b) that they were actually able to pull it off. Among the rest of the second half, the standout track is the energetic, rocking “Rogues,” which could totally be splotched on the first side of A Sexually Assaulted Male Page Left of the U.S. House of Representatives and fit right in, but don’t forget the breezy acoustic/percussion thing “Paper Shoes” (christ, what a horrific title; fortunately, this is counteracted by a cool guitar solo) or the interesting melodic rocker “Diamonds and Coal.” I also like the second “Earth to Bella” thing at the end with the organ that doesn’t go to shit at the end. Them’s good stuffs.
So a lighter, more adult Incubus is still good, and make no mistake, they are firmly in the “adult” camp now. Morning View was more SoCal happy rock and A Penis Left of the Gay Porn Movie was angry politico-rock, and while neither was MTV kid rock like their first two albums, it’s not like they had fully burned that bridge yet. Now they have, and let’s just hope they can avoid becoming boring now, since that’s a common side-effect of becoming “adult,” isn’t it? Hell, I’ll forget this band exists in a few more months anyway.
To resist is to piss in the
wind! Anyone who does will end up
SMELLING!