Incubus broaden their HM lingo

Incubus is one of those strange bands that do not really fit and regularly challenge metal fans to the brink of… misunderstanding. Although veritable stars back home, this lot are near such a status in Europe. The reason are albums that usually can out-Tool A Perfect Circle as well as out-rock many a metal heavy.

The band’s fifth album, ‘A Crow Left Of The Murder’, witnesses singer Brandon Boyd and guitarist Mike Einziger, the two responsible for not-standing-still but making exploratory and experimental records, rather than re-doing again and again; in parts it delights and then - some don’t.

This disc brings quite a few surprises: guitarist Einziger’s enlarged his vocabulary - funk and metal roots - with jazz, blues and progressive rock. He is freed to do so by a new bassist; the addition of Ben Kenney affords Einziger the leeway to explore new territories within the songs.

Kenney, a former member of the Roots and a multi-instrumentalist studio musician who appears on recent albums by Bubba Sparxxx and Blackalicious, can carry a song with his bass lines alone - alike the late John Entwistle used to do while The Who’s Pete Townshend was wind milling! - effectually putting a looser leash on the guitarist. And, Einziger grabs it with all fingers! It’s probably for the best anyway and, it somehow, makes it ‘his album’. On ‘Pistola’ he sounds like Rush’s Alex Lifeson, had the Canadian axeman joined the Pixies in the late ‘80s.

The new album suggests that Incubus succeed when they stick to the crafts they spent four albums perfecting. When they stretch, they don’t always have a firm grasp on their targets. There is a whole range of sounds, from drums on ‘Priceless’ that bounce like they were tuned by Lars Ulrich circa the canning of ‘St. Anger’, plenty of rocking, to ‘Made for TV Movie’, a predictable Creed-sounding rock song...

‘See Deveel’ is an out-of-the-field carnivalesque tune that brings Incubus the closest to the stoney jams that sustained early songs, though within a much more metallic vein. ‘A Crow Left of the Murder’, with songs such as ‘Sick, Sad Little World’, ‘Megalomaniac’, ‘Beware! Criminal’ [evolutionary successor to ‘Nice to Know You’ from 2001’s ‘Morning View’], will not change the world but will surely provide decent moments of solid rocking.

Much better than Metallica’s ‘St Anger’ but then - that ain’t a high-order task…

8/10
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Tour dates:

12 May - SECC, Glasgow
13 May - NIA, Birmingham
14 May - MEN, Manchester
15 May - Wembley Arena, London