(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Incubus is a quintet Los Angeles led by frontman and vocalist Brandon Boyd
that plays a hybrid of hard-rock riffs, hip-hop beats, funk bass lines and
post-metal crooning. Rather than taking on their contemporaries
Limp Bizkit and
Korn, they hark back to the origins of the crossover,
to Faith No More,
to Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Rage Against The Machine and Primus.
The EP Fungus Amongus (Epic, 1995) collects unreleased material from their early years.
Science (Immortal, 1997) was the showcase for their musical mastery
and their brutal hyper-fusion (Magic Medicine, Summer Romance,
Nebula).
There was nothing on the album
that had not been done before, but
one could sense a deep feeling of honesty and a sincere spleen.
The much more accessible
Make Yourself (Epic, 1999) is remarkably effective in stealing
stereotypes of grunge and pop and manufacturing catchy and atmospheric songs
like Privilege and Make Yourself.
The band is careful not to exaggerate in either direction:
the Nirvana-esque monster-riff of Nowhere Fast
lasts only a few seconds, soon overrun by a power-ballad (with traces of
Steely Dan-esque jazz); The Warmth loosens the tension
with a Doors-ian organ and related suspense;
Stellar's middle section is straight out of a Police album.
Towards the end the band displays whatever originality it has gotten:
Drive (their best-seller) is a cute country-rocker in the vein of Crosby Stills & Nash;
the guitar plays "coitus interruptus" in Clean, supported by
a funky bass;
Battlestar Scralatchtica toys with toasting,
scratching and hip-hop beats.
Incubus' grunge is a music of brains, not muscles.
Wish You Were Here and Blood On The Ground continue the process
of re-alignment to the mainstream on Morning View (Epic, 2001), although
the album displays a sonic elegance and eclectic dynamics that virtually
reinvents the art of heavy-metal.
Nice To Know You, Have You Ever and Under My Umbrella
are replete with stereotypes but subvert them with every successive note.
The experiment fails because of an excess of "softness"
(11 am and Mexico), but is nonetheless unusual.
A Crow Left Of The Murder (Epic, 2004) is simply an album of
generically bombastic hard-rock (Megalomaniac).
By the time of Light Grenades (Sony, 2006), Incubus had become
synonym with "mainstream metal". The
singalong Diamonds and Coal, the ballad Earth to Bella
and the occasional burst of violence (Anna Molly) defined the
stereotype of what the masses expected from mainstream metal.
If Not Now, When (2011) contains Adolescents and little else
to commend the new power-pop course.
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