Incubus Throw Grenades At Their Label

You know you're a successful, highly respected band when you can tell Sony Music what's what.

In late 2004, after more than a decade on the road and in the studio, Incubus took a much deserved year off. Then they took another year recording their new album, Light Grenades. What did they tell the suits at Sony?

"'We'll start it when it feels like we should start it, and let's finish it when it feels finished,'" says frontman Brandon Boyd. "We, in a very direct way, we told our record label and management we're taking a break, and when we hand in a record it's going to be the best record we've ever done. We're not going to hand it in 'til that day. They asked when that is. We said we didn't know, as we walked off into the sunset."

Give Sony credit for understanding. Boyd says that the label has always left the music making to the band.

"There's not a lot of creative interaction with the record label," Boyd says. "They've never intruded upon the process in any way. Some of the A&R guys come into the studio when we're recording and listen to a few songs, say it sounds awesome and then they leave. It's the exact opposite from all the horror stories you hear from bands."

Besides their own determination to make the best record they were capable of, much of the extra time it took to make Light Grenades can be attributed to producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine).

"Brendan challenged us more than any other producer had," says Boyd. "I wanted to be pushed and challenged and he did that. When I presented him with what I thought was a fucking genius song idea, he would say, 'Yeah, that's pretty cool, but it's not done yet, go home and dig deeper.' I'm like, 'I hate you, but you're right.' He has that way of, in a very non-threatening way, bringing the best out of us."

Light Grenades proves it was worth the wait, another step forward for Incubus. It shows the band are just as ready to kick out the jams on "Anna Molly" as they are prepared to tread into sensitive pop territory, like on "Oil And Water." Then there's the two-part "Earth To Bella," a song about a fictitious character who isn't so fictitious after all.

"Bella thinks she has everything figured out in her young life and she's soon to discover that everything she thought was real, solid, right and worthy in her life, really doesn't mean that much at all," says Boyd. "Bella is just the potentially beautiful soul that is perhaps just a little mislead.

"A lot of the time when I write a lyric I'm talking to myself and I don't even realize it until the records been out for a month, and I'm like, 'Oops.'"

Incubus play the Kool Haus in Toronto on Feb. 4.