Epic rock band Incubus is on its first North American tour in two years. The multiplatinum quintet's long-awaited excursion kicked off Jan. 5 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver and covers 25 major cities across the U.
S. and Canada.
Incubus stops at the House of Blues, North Myrtle Beach for a sold-out show Thursday with Albert Hammond Jr.
Vocalist Brandon Boyd, guitarist Mike Einziger, bassist Ben Kenney, DJ Chris Kilmore and drummer Jose Pasilla are touring in support of their sixth studio release, "Light Grenades," which hit shelves Nov. 28. The disc debuted at No.
1 (a first for Incubus, according to Einziger) while also holding a No. 1 radio single with "Anna Molly."
Kicks!
chatted with Einziger recently during a phone interview from his Malibu, Calif., home.
Q.
| So this is the band's first North American tour in two years. What have you guys been up to in those two years?
A.
| We took a year and a half off. We were all doing other things. But we took a year off from playing in the band.
Then we took about nine months [before] we started writing songs. It took about nine months before we had written enough music that we were comfortable to go into the studio. Over that period of nine months we would go into the studio for maybe three or four days at a time, and record small groups of songs that we had written.
...
Like 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 and be traveling, then we would write a few more songs and go record those and we just did that until we felt we had a record.
So that took about nine months. Now we're ready to conquer the rest of the world.
Q.
| So "Light Grenades" took nine months, versus about three months for the whole writing and recording process?
A. | Usually, overall, it would usually take us maybe four or five months.
But the thing is [that] we took a year and a half off completely before it. Usually we would've gone straight from being on the road to writing again. Maybe take a week off or something.
But we took a year and a half off.
Q. | That's a nice little "spring break.
"
A. | We just felt like it was time. We deserved it.
We had been working so hard for so long, and it just seemed so necessary for us to take a break like that. Being out 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 - being at home, relationships with people. I love it, but there are some things that are very tiring about it.
So 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. Now I'm ready to go.
Q. | So tell me about the album, "Light Grenades." Why did you guys decide to go with that album title?
A. | We had written a song called "Light Grenades." It was a musical idea I had written.
I invited Brandon [Boyd] over to my house one day because I was really excited to play it for him. He came over and listened to it and got really excited about it. As he was sitting there, he told me it made him imagine people, like protesters, young kids, throwing what looked like grenades - but instead of exploding and destroying things, they exploded with creativity and good ideas and revolutionary thinking.
And it was an interesting idea.
Once he came up with the framework for that, the whole record seemed to be laced with it. It came to be a part of every song he's written, so it just seems fitting for the whole entire album to be called "Light Grenades.
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