A Crow Left Of The Murder
Incubus' fifth album opens with Brandon Boyd shouting at the pop stars on his TV, radio and computer screen: "Hey, megalomaniac! You're no Jesus! You're no fucking Elvis! You're no answer!" The rest of the disc finds him suffering from similar media overload and spitting out apocalyptic images over the band's lean grooves, swaggering riffs, skittering leads and Technicolor atmospheres. "Quit blowing each other up," he sagely commands us dumbass humans in "Made for TV Movie." The band still indulges in plenty of effects-happy instrumental gymnastics and tricky rhythms, but A Crow Left of the Murder . . . is also its most consistently tune-based album. Perversely, that means Boyd will likely be seeing and hearing more of himself in the media. Which might not be such a bad thing.