"You're no f***ing Jesus. Step down." From the looks of the video for "Megalomaniac," the first single from "A Crow Left of the Murder," Incubus is finally ready to live up to its demon-rapist moniker again. It may be the group's first entry into the MTV rotation in years, but they pull no punches, turning it into some of the most intensely political metal since System of a Down.
This is their first album since the departure of founding bassist Dirk "Yes It's A Pseudonym, Smartass" Lance. Filling in the bottom end is former Roots bassist Ben Kenney, who initially met the rest of the boys through their funky Time Lapse Consortium side project. Dirk was single-handedly responsible for the crunch inherent in early songs like "Speak Free," "The Answer" and "New Skin." Kenney, on the other hand, hails from a groove background, and utterly fails to deliver the same.
To his credit, though, that's probably not exactly what most people were expecting. 1999's "Make Yourself" and 2001's "Morning View" may have shot the band up to the highest reaches of pop culture notoriety, but they also represented a gradual degradation of the metal foundation upon which it was founded. As a mid-tempo rock bassist, then, Kenney does a much better job than expected, keeping up with (if not outrunning) guitarist Mike Einziger's rapid riffery on one song and then exuding tranquility on the next.
Incubus has always been a lot goofier than the nu-metal bands with which they are often inexplicably lumped. Even though "Calgone" and "Trouble In 421" are among the heaviest songs they've ever recorded, I dare you to find anything by Linkin Park or Adema with a comparable sense of humor.
That's gone on this album, however, and I'm not entirely sure how I ought to feel about that. I've thought for a long time now that Incubus is more or less the future of rock and roll, but I'd hate to see them lapse into a fit of self-indulgent artistic pretension.However, seeing as "A Crow Left of the Murder" exhibits such thematic unity, I'll cut them some slack; it's hard to find a way to fit Dr. Seuss in alongside protest anthems and provocative language.
One has to wonder if the title track - and thus, to some degree, the album as a whole - is intended to be an answer to the disenfranchised metal heads who have continually blasted their once and future kings as a result of "Make Yourself" and everything after. Case in point: major key signatures don't mean a thing here. It's still totally antagonistic, boasting antsy guitar riffs and unrelenting percussion that drive to a finale in which an audibly exasperated Brandon Boyd continually shrieks, "Do you get it yet? Do you get it yet?"
Yes, Brandon. We get it. Truth be told, I didn't actually like the majority of these songs after my first couple of passes, and there are still a few that aren't sitting quite right. "Zee Deveel" is a perfect example of excessive progressivism gone awry, and their adorable attempt at a corybantic "Priceless" would be almost as ridiculous as Metallica's recent "revival" were it not for a spicy little jam near the end. Even if I didn't enjoy them on an immediate level, though, their artistic merit was evident from the outset, and I can already feel them starting to grow on me. A month from now, I'm going to love them... and that, my friend, is evolution in a nutshell.
As for the disappointed former fans, well, they're still going to be disappointed. "A Crow Left of the Murder" is no more or less driving than their last two albums, with a good number of the songs drawing from the ambiguously middle-of-the-road "Nowhere Fast" aesthetic. It is, however, overtly furious about the inhumane ways of humanity - even the slow songs often struggle to resolve themselves with sarcastic lyrical nuggets like "Lights! Camera! Transaction!" It's not so much that this album is heavy as that it's just angry... but maybe that's just because there's more to be angry about now than there was during the summer of 2001.
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