Incubus chats about break – “We deserved it…”
Epic recording artists Incubus took a year-and-a-half off from the touring and recording of band life before releasing its latest studio album, Light Grenades. The band’s sixth studio release hit record stores in late November 2006 and since brought Incubus back into the rock spotlight, thanks to the catchy lead single, Anna Molly, which reached No. 1 on the Hot Modern Rock charts, while crossing over onto Mainstream Rock and Pop charts. The album itself was equally successful, reaching the No. 1 position on Billboard’s Top 200 and Top Internet Albums charts. Taking that much time off from the band isn’t a typical Incubus practice, but after more than 15 years together, the band needed time to live life outside of Incubus.Incubus formed in 1991 with core members vocalist Brandon Boyd, guitarist Mike Einziger and drummer Joe Pasillas while high school classmates in Calabasas, California. DJ Kilmore joined in 1998. The band had its “big break” in 1999 with the singles Pardon Me, Stellar and Drive from their second full-length, double-platinum selling disc, Make Yourself. The group’s third album, Morning View, released in 2001, debuted at No. 2 on the album chart and included hits Wish You Were Here, Nice to Know You, and Warning. Bassist Ben Kenney joined Incubus in 2003 in time to record with the band for 2004’s platinum-selling A Crow Left of the Murder. After years of hard work – the band was ready for a hard-earned break. “We deserved it,” Mike Einziger said during a phone interview from his Malibu, California home.
“We had been working so hard for so long and it just seemed so necessary for us to take a break like that. Traveling like that constantly is a beautiful, amazing experience - but at the same time, there is a price for doing that. You sacrifice a lot of things. You sacrifice being at home; you sacrifice relationships with people. I love it, but there are some things that are very tiring about it. It was very great to come home and for the first time ever, put ‘roots’ down. Find a place to live and actually live there for a while, wake up in the morning and know that you’re not leaving town any time soon. That was a different thing for us and it felt really good. It was nice to just hang out with my family and friends and just be lazy if I felt like it, or work on music if I felt like it. You don’t necessarily have all those options when you’re on the road.”
After their break, the band took a more laid-back approach to creating its next studio album. “It took about nine months before we had written enough music that we were comfortable to go into the studio,” Einziger said. “But the nine months of writing time wasn’t like we were writing for nine months. It was like write a couple songs here, write a couple songs there. And then over that period of nine months we would go into the studio for three or four days at a time, and record small groups of songs that we had written. It was very leisurely. We would do it whenever it felt like it was right. We didn’t push it at all; we didn’t try to make anything happen that wasn’t going to happen. “In the past we have always written and recorded our albums very quickly and this was no exception, except we did it over a longer period of time. When we would write songs, we would go in the studio and record three of them. Those three songs could be recorded very quickly. Then weeks would go by when we would do other things… then we would write a few more songs and go record those. We just did that until we felt we had a record.”
The result: Incubus was “ready to conquer the rest of the world” with Light Grenades. The band recorded in Atlanta and L.A. with acclaimed producer Brendan O’ Brien (Audioslave, Neil Young, Pearl Jam) and released the album on November 28, 2006, Light Grenades debuted at No. 1, a first for Incubus. “We’ve never had that happen before,” Einziger said. “So we’re pretty happy about having a No. 1 record. And this morning, we were told that our single Anna Molly is the No. 1 song on the radio.”
The band has had plenty of Top 5 singles (Pardon Me, Drive, Stellar, Wish You Were Here, Megalomaniac). But having a No. 1 record debut and a No. 1 single at the same time is “historic for us,” Einziger said. “It’s a nice little unexpected surprise, and we’ll take it.”
By Kristi Singer
Image by Brian Bowen-Smith
