Light Grenades
Light Grenades is the sixth studio album by alternative rock band Incubus, released on November 28, 2006, on Epic. The album sold 359,000 copies during its first week of release worldwide, and debuted at No. 1 on the "Billboard" 200, selling 165,000 copies in the US in its first week; it is the band's first number one album. However, until November 20, 2016, "Light Grenades" held the dubious honor of having the title of the biggest drop from No. 1 in chart history, falling to number 37. The album achieved Gold certification, less than the band's  previous Platinum records beginning with 1999's "Make Yourself". History. "Earth to Bella" and "Love Hurts" made their live debut in front of an audience at the Make Some Noise concert on April 29, 2006. "A Kiss to Send Us Off" and "Anna Molly" made their live debut on "VH1's Decades Rock: Live Tribute to the Pretenders" on August 11, 2006, even though the songs were not featured in the program. The same two songs were also performed at Edgefest 2006 on September 30 at Tempe Beach Park, Arizona. "Rogues" made its debut at a pair of pre album -release shows at the London Astoria and the Berlin Postbahnhof on November 14 and 16, 2006. The songs "Punch Drunk" and "Look Alive" were recorded during the Light Grenades sessions, but were originally only available as bonus tracks on the Japanese edition of the album. Live versions have since seen release worldwide on the Look Alive live DVD. The studio versions of both songs are also on "Monuments and Melodies". Musical style. Mike Einziger, Incubus' guitarist, commented in an interview with MTV that the album "sounds like 13 different bands playing 13 different songs... Every time we're about to  start making a new album, I tell myself, 'Okay, this one's going to be cohesive,' and it never happens." For the most part, "Light Grenades" expands upon the sounds previously explored in 2004's "A Crow Left of the Murder...". Other songs showcase a new direction for the band. For example, Brandon Boyd describes the curious recording technique behind "Paper Shoes": "There's a song called 'Paper Shoes' where Michael and I mic'd our bodies with ambient mics and did the percussion tracks pounding on our chests and skulls. The galloping rhythm is us pounding on our chests. It  was really funny. We were trying so hard not to laugh because we were sitting there like cavemen beating our chests!" Themes. When asked about the album title, Boyd explained: "There's a song called that on the record and it felt like the most pertinent conceptual aspect of the album, the idea of throwing ideas at problems and the ideas explode with light and good results and intention on consciousness. So I started imagining imagery of students in different countries protesting and throwing Molotov cocktails with masks over their faces. But there's one brave student who runs up  to the police line and, as opposed to throwing rocks or things that destroy, there's this concept of that one courageous, lonely student running up and throwing ideas and having them actually change things. It just seemed kind of a cool concept: the redefining of weaponry." Critical reception. At Metacritic, which assigns a rating determined by a "weighted average" of reviews from mainstream critics, the album received a score of 65 out of 100, based on 13 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". However, "Beats per Minute" later identified this album as the start of Incubus' decline in quality that  continued with later, softer releases such as "If Not Now, When?" (2011).