If holographic droids in the future ever excavate the musical period from the late 1990s to early 00s, they would certainly be confused by any items in the time capsule marked nu-metal. Baggy skate jeans. Wallet chains. Flesh tunnels and hair-spiking gel. A turntable and a backwards cap. A bushy chin beard. This was a questionable period in rock music, beloved of frustrated suburban kids like me, that blended rap, metal and what could be loosely termed alternative fashion to freakish effect. Slipknot, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park – though they didn’t sound like each other they were united in weirdness, aggressive riffs, dodgy lyrics and usually, though not always, some light turntable scratching.
Caught up in this unfortunate hellscape were five nerdy hippies from Calabasas, California. They surfed, liked science and had a frontman who never wore a shirt. On paper, perhaps the band’s premise was always a bit ridiculous. Early on they played skronky funk metal, with scatted vocals like their heroes Primus, and had songs with titles such as Psychopsilocybin. But one major-label deal later, they became nu-metal’s bare-chested boyband, creating sensitive make-out music for the misunderstood masses. Soon Incubus were everywhere: at one point you couldn’t watch MTV2 without seeing Brandon Boyd’s nipples. By 2000, every single white guy with dreadlocks and an acoustic guitar at a house party knew the chords to their acoustic road-trip hit Drive.
Fast forward to the present day, and Boyd and drummer José Pasillas are sitting on chintzy sofas in London’s Soho Hotel. They are now in their 40s, ear stretchings gone, although their sense of humour remains. Boyd is eloquent, goofy and so supernaturally handsome that it is best not to look directly at him. He is an artist and also recently released a jewellery line. His Instagram (314,000 followers) is an endless scroll of ponchos and lopsided man buns. At one point he says, to clarify how serious he is about his bohemian lifestyle: “I fucking love crystals.” Pasillas is warm, earnest, and probably wearing something from his clothing line.
Nu-metal turns 20 this year, but the band are keen to distance themselves from any lingering associations. “When I hear that term, it makes my palms sweat a bit,” says Boyd. “We were being embraced by some of the nu-metal champions of the time, and opening for them, and it always made me cringe.” This is partly because many teenage fans have grown up to realise that much of nu-metal was mired by a negative attitude towards women. Incubus, however, were sensitive and female-friendly. “So much of nu-metal was openly misogynistic,” Boyd says, “and that always felt really weird to me.”
Incubus never did fit into any one scene or sound. “We stuck out all through the 90s, whether we were playing with a ska band, a punk band or a nu-metal band,” says Pasillas. But they are celebrating their own 20th anniversary with a new album, 8, which was largely produced with Dave Sardy (last album: Catfish and the Bottlemen) but includes co-production by Skrillex, one of the most familiar faces of EDM turned architect of contemporary pop.
It wasn’t always clear they would stay together. Studio time involving Boyd, Pasillas, guitarist Mike Einziger, DJ Kilmore and bassist Ben Kenney on If Not Now, When? in 2011 sounded far less enjoyable. The bland singer-songwriterly album reached No 2 in the US charts, but the band’s future was uncertain.
“I’d be lying if I said most of us didn’t think that would be our last album,” says Boyd. “When I listen to it I can feel the weight of the problems we were having in the band, the problems we were having personally and the awareness of the end of long relationships with our label and manager. It was falling apart.” He adds one of his very Boydian observations. “The thing is,” he says, “things need to fall apart in order to get perspective. Because we had let it die, it was interesting again.”
It is interesting, not least because of the connection between nu-metal and EDM in the US, genres that link metallic and maximalist beats. But was this exploration into EDM a step Incubus ever imagined they’d take? “Even six weeks ago I’d have said no,” says Pasillas. Skrillex has dipped his Converse kicks in nu-metal waters before. In his early days of dance music production, when his style was a troll-like mutation of dubstep, he produced an album for Korn. Despite Einziger having carved a niche as an EDM co-writer, notably for Avicii’s 2013 smash Wake Me Up, there was some apprehension about Incubus crossing into that world. “I was a little afraid, not that [Skrillex] was going to ruin it, but [that he would] turn it into something that I wouldn’t be in love with,” says Boyd. The singer did, after all, write an article that compared certain types of dance music to diarrhoea. “But he extended the eyelashes. They were already beautiful eyes, he just highlighted them.”
The resulting album cannibalises Incubus’s original style while also fitting into the modern pop landscape. There are plenty “boner riffs”, as Boyd has called them, and tracks that recall their 1999 breakthrough album, Make Yourself. There are vague themes of ageing, digital culture and paranoia, and probably the sexiest song about CCTV written yet, Love in a Time of Surveillance. There are, as is to be expected, corny anti-love songs. But it could slot neatly alongside anything at the top of the charts. As if to underline this curious symbiosis, the week before we meet, Incubus were part of a fundraising concert organised by the EDM producer Zedd, appearing alongside Imagine Dragons, rapper Macklemore, Skrillex, Halsey and Tinashe. The promiscuity of pop music has worked in the band’s favour. “Skrillex and Incubus matching just makes sense in some strange sort of way,” says Pasillas. “There’s no definitive line any more, the lines have been blurred so much.”
Some will argue that nostalgia is the death of innovation, but Incubus are at least making it work in their favour: with 8, they are plugging into a generation of fans nostalgic for music of the early 00s even as the band repackage their sound for the next generation. As they put it, they’ve come full circle. “It’s been really interesting going to the different gatekeepers now, which are the Spotifys of the world,” says Boyd. “All those people running those companies are like, ‘Dude! You were my first concert.’”
As they’re celebrating their birthday, what do they think their legacy will be? “It’s like trying to describe the backs of your eyeballs,” says Boyd. “It’s right there, but I can’t see it. It’s more up to someone with a more objective opinion.”
I’m not so sure about how objective one can be. To me, Incubus will always be posters on my bedroom wall, stealing snogs with guys who had goatees like wire scourers and singing Drive in school assembly. But no matter how much older we are now, some things will never change. Boyd, 41, assures me that he is not about to stop taking his top off any time soon. “I’m going to do it until I can’t do it any more. One of my musical lead singer heroes is Iggy Pop, and that motherfucker is still taking his shirt off.”
Does anyone in Incubus get tired of seeing Brandon’s nipples?
“No, he’s got nice nipples,” Pasillas says. “Haven’t you seen those things?”
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