Review Summary: Incubus disappoints me once again...
I was really not looking forward to this after how poor their last studio effort was. I randomly stumbled upon the live version of "Trust Fall" one night, which sort of gave me a small smidgen of hope that this new release wouldn't blow. As soon as this EP dropped, I immediately had to sit down and listen to it. I still stand by what I said about "Trust Fall", the studio version sounds great, it's excellently crafted and well written ...unfortunately the moment that the first track ends this EP starts to plummet into mediocrity.
Track 2, "Make Out Party" opens with a doom-metal sounding riff, and is instantly ruined by Brandon Boyd's ridiculously out-of-place falsetto singing and (forgive me for using this term) cringe-worthy lyricism. Seriously, what the hell happened during the production of this song? I've heard some really bad songs from Incubus before... but this song is so bad it almost seems like it was made as a joke.
Moving on, while I definitely wouldn't be so harsh as to say that "Absolution Calling" is an unlistenable track, what I will say is that it doesn't really bring anything new, interesting or creative to the table. At this point I was actually considering throwing all of the Incubus albums I own into a bonfire in an attempt to erase this entire band from my memory. But alas, there is one last song remaining. Could this 4 minute long track be the one to redeem this entire EP? somehow I seriously doubt it.
Track 4, "Dance Like You're Dumb" begins with a grunge/punk rock vibe, and instantaneously disappoints and falters again as soon as the chorus hits. I feel like the major downfall of this EP is that Brandon Boyd's vocals are just simply not what they used to be, which results into a unpolished and awkward sounding EP. Which is a real shame because the musicianship displayed on all 4 tracks is not half bad.
Needless to say that I'm not really looking forward to side B, although I'll probably listen to it anyway just so I can disappoint myself again. My suggestion to Incubus is to either drop Boyd, or just call it quits. Maybe that seems irrational, but I legitimately believe that Brandon Boyd is holding this band back from their full potential.
