Incubus frontman Brandon Boyd recently appeared on Nikki Sixx‘s ‘Sixx Sense‘ to discuss the band’s forthcoming album “8” and more. During the conversation Boyd revealed that he isn’t entirely a fan of Incubus‘ chosen moniker, offering:
“It’s one of those things where a place I land with it, is eh, it’s just a name, just let the music speak kind of thing. But some people really like it, and then some people are really unnerved by it. And some people, including myself, think that it doesn’t really fit the kind of music we make, but that’s okay, it’s just a name. Let me share some better band names I have… Band names: Squishy Robot Fingers, Freckled Warlock, Rogue Scholar, Vajazzle, Sparkly Music, I have so many. Most of them are jokes, like things I read on the side of… My 4-year old nephew, I was wrestling with him, and he said, ‘You’re a maggot eye!’ I was like, ‘Dude, that’s a really good heavy metal band name! Maggot Eye!’ I’d go see that band.”
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When it came to why the album has ‘heavier’ vibe, Boyd credited a good chunk of it to producer Dave Sardy (Slayer, Helmet), who oversaw the album sessions:
“Dave said to me at a certain point early in the process that—he admitted to me that he was a huge Incubus fan and that a couple of our early albums were important to him on a number of levels. So he basically said that he wasn’t gonna let us get away with anything that fell short of that expectation he had of us. That was intriguing to me, it ended up being highly frustrating to me at certain points during the process [due to multiple takes behind demanded…]”
He continued
“Something that he, I think, was interested in was bringing back certain elements of our band that we had sort of naturally gravitated away from. He wanted to remind us of certain things, that just being so close in it for so many years… We’re not outwardly trying to repeat patterns, but he was like ‘You’re allowed to vibe on some of these earlier riff things.’ That’s still fair game, you can still be innovative and do stuff like that.”
He also spoke of the overall vibe of the new album:
“‘Nimble Bastard‘ is probably-the tempo of it-it’s a faster song than the rest of the record. But I’d say in large part it’s one of the heavier records we’ve written in a long time, as far as just like the temperature of it.
There are some mid-tempo songs, but they have something about them, they’re not like ‘lite.’ Even the ones that are mid-tempo or slow, there’s still a heaviness to them, there was a lot of tuning experimentation that Michael [Einziger] played with some tunings that I don’t even know if they existed beforehand.”
A tentative April 21st release date has been set for “8” on Island Records.
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