The most important question that arises this evening, long before the actual evening has actually started, is why there are still so damn many unanswered questions. For example, there is the question of why. Incubus are on a small European tour – but why? What is there to play? Sure, the festival summer is something you like to take with you, but apart from that there are actually more reasons against a tour at this time than there are reasons for a tour at this time. For example, that Incubus Band bassist Ben Kennea is recovering from brain tumor surgery and they had to find a replacement for the live performances. And that there is no tour reason at all in the form of new Incubus products.
The last time the Southern California band played the continent was in 2018, and there was a new studio album out that they wanted to present or at least promote on stages around the world. The album was called “Eight” because it was, yes, exactly, the band’s eighth (and last) studio album, and the choice of title shows that Incubus already reached their peak in terms of creativity a bit at this point left far behind. That’s five years ago. It hasn’t gotten any better since then.
Then there are the many questions, or rather the many question marks, that the opening act raises. Well, support band, that’s a big word when the band concept culminates in just one person. Actually, it’s better to speak of a pre-act. Lealani. Lealani is, well, to put it mildly, a rather idiosyncratic one-woman music project. The multi-instrumentalist describes herself as an “alien from a fantastic planet” who does “art + cartoons + whatever I feel like”, and that’s how the whole thing sounds, with the emphasis on whatever, and the feeling, yes, the feeling , let’s be honest, that’s not so good from the listener’s side. Is that avant-garde or can it go away? At least this question can be answered quite clearly on an evening full of question marks.
Incubus were four handfuls of hits and three and a half fantastic albums
But the really biggest question, to which one hopes for an answer this evening, is the somewhat bigger question, why a band like Incubus now belongs to this group of bands that have unjustifiably been forgotten, even though they weren’t not only had an important pop-cultural hinge function, but also left behind a few albums that have to be rated as grandiose to this day. Incubus, it has to be said, was a damn first class band for a short time.
Founded in Southern California in the early 1990s, discovered by KoRn label Immortal Records, they were the last offshoots of the NuMetal hype, although they never even remotely served the classic NuMetal genres, but rather their own form of funk-dominated crossover tinkering designed, with which they then in turn became the figureheads of the early 00s alternative boom. It’s quite remarkable the career of Incubus, which has been around for 30 years, but can be boiled down to a heyday of just five years, in which they released four handfuls of hits and three and a half fantastic albums (from 1999’s Make Yourself, 2004’s A Crow Left Of The Murder, or, to a lesser extent, 2006’s Light Grenades).
Tonight, Incubus extinguish the torch of rock ‘n’ roll
So Monday now, Hamburg, Stadtpark, lots of unanswered questions and a sunny evening. There shouldn’t even be as many public places in the city where things are as relaxed as in Winterhuder Stadtpark, after all, a few kilometers away, HSV is playing for a future in the top division almost simultaneously under the worst possible conditions . But the thirtysomethings who nevertheless gathered in front of the open-air stage and survived Lealani’s “whatever I feel like” sound-vocabulary rubbish seem to be deeply relaxed.
The audience is more than pleasant overall, except for the prancing hippie couple in front of the stage, who are apparently still under the ayahuasca-induced impressions of their last trip to Bali, you can see from the thirtysomethings that they decided to do it at the best possible time in their lives decided to have heard the best music possible, which is what led them to Incubus then and to this place today.
Incubus – “Drive”:
While the hippie couple is still dancing, the Incubus enter the stage quite punctually at 8 p.m. and start singing “Karma, Comback”, a recently released B-side, which unfortunately sets the overall tonality of the concert. Instead of stepping forward energetically with a rocking opener, they opt for a mediocre mid-tempo number that, in its mediocrity, hasn’t even made it onto a regular album by the band. Here it should already be clear what a few songs later fully confirms: Incubus didn’t come to play a rock show. Incubus have come to hold a retrospective. The most musically possible interpretation of their oeuvre, which they only want to present instead of actually performing.
Brandon Boyd has always been a good singer and now he’s more than that, now Brandon Boyd is actually a damn good singer and it’s pretty obvious that the focus of the concert is to prove that. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really do justice to the overall Incubus experience. Incubus have always drawn their strength as a band from the mixture of their funk-influenced groove, their guitar-heavy aggressiveness and southern Californian chill, but in Hamburg they no longer wanted to use this formula. Aggression is over. Incubus came to make music. No longer to carry on the torch of rock ‘n’ roll.
A blockbuster in the afternoon program
Although Boyd, who despite his advanced age now looks like a 1991s version of Anthony Kiedis, still masters one or the other genre-typical pose, the dominant feature is now the Californian chill, which tempts him to take off his shirt over the course of the show and getting rid of (at least one) of his shoes and occasionally letting his super long hair fall over his still very beautiful face. But even that doesn’t hide the fact that it’s more of an Anthonoy Kiedis on Valium on stage.
In the last few years, Incubus have probably sanded the last rough edges somewhere, the band has become frugal. The set is instrumentally clean, but played down completely listlessly. Not even bass prodigy Nicole Row, formerly of Panic! at the Disco before Panic! at the disco no more panic! wanted to be at the disco, and now accompanies all Incubus tour dates, manages to bring even a hint of momentum to the sluggish performance. The spark never really jumps over to the audience. Even a homeopathic spark would be enough to trigger a large conflagration in the heat of the evening.
Incubus – “Love Hurts”:
That doesn’t mean everything is bad. Every now and then there is a mood. Whenever the band intones their trademark sound from the 1999 album “Make Yourself”. Or when one of the numerous hits is played, which are actually so numerous that one almost forgot them. “Wish You Were Here”, “Love Hurts”, “Pardon Me”, “Drive”, “Anna Molly”, “Nice To Know You”. But the song with which Incubus perfected their very own loud-quiet groove scheme, “Megalomaniac”, isn’t even played, and then the show is over again before the sun has really set. An Incubus concert in the city park is like a blockbuster in the afternoon program with the curtains open. A blockbuster where the best scenes have been cut out.
Not all open questions will be answered on this Monday evening, but the question of why this band, which played in the Stadtpark sometime between Nena and “Best Of Poetry Slam” (!) this summer, why this band, which with all their hits really should not be forgotten, but then gradually slipped into relative oblivion, this question unfortunately answers itself all by itself. And a few kilometers further, HSV also sealed that it will remain second-class for another season. Not a good evening for Hamburg.