Incubus are hitting the road, and the backstage mood is heavy. Tonight the band plays a secret warm-up gig for fans, friends and family in Los Angeles, twenty miles from where they grew up in the San Fernando Valley. But tomorrow, they take off for Japan to start a year-long tour. It's sinking in that they're going to be away a long, long time. Lead singer Brandon Boyd shakes his head: "Our girlfriends are really mad at us, man."

To their dismay, Incubus used to get lumped in with the new-metal bands, mostly because they had a silly name and a DJ. But they've left those other bands way behind. Their new album, A Crow Left of the Murder..., is racking up rave reviews as well as monster sales, debuting on the charts at Number Two. They're all over the radio with their controversial hit "Megalomaniac," which has an anti-war, anti-Bush video.

Meanwhile, backstage before the show, the twenty-eight-year-old Boyd is deep in conversation about spiritual matters, since he is a spiritual kind of rock star. Boyd is thoughtful and articulate, a new-school sex symbol wearing a vintage Police pin on his Nehru jacket, his Converse high tops painted black to hide the logo. He discusses the spiritual aspects of "Megalomaniac" until he gets distracted by a girl in blue moccasins.

"Cool shoes," he says, looking up into her eyes intensely.

"Thanks," says the girl, a friend of one of Incubus' girlfriends, and they chat for a moment. Then she sinks into a chair and smiles the way a girl only smiles after a rock star has complimented her shoes in front of her friends. There are spiritual matters to discuss, and world leaders to take down, but even when the pressure's on, Brandon Boyd doesn't neglect the details.

Whatever the prevailing rock fad is, Incubus like to go the opposite way. Three years ago, when all the new-metal machismo was raging, Incubus got unfashionably in touch with their feelings, scoring a huge hit with the ballad "Drive." Boyd came on like a sensitive Aquarian Jesus love god, comfortable with baring his feminine side, and even more comfortable with baring his chest onstage. Incubus became one of the few bands heavy enough for male fans but with enough emotion and crush appeal for female fans. At times it gets surreal — at tonight's show, the girls in the crowd scream orgasmically, even during the drum solo.

In 2004, Incubus are going against the grain again, but this time it's political. "Megalomaniac" features a pulverizing guitar riff and unmistakable fury as Boyd screams the chorus: "Hey! Megalomaniac!/You're no Jesus!/Yeah, you're no fucking Elvis!/Wash your hands clean of yourself, baby/And step down!/Step down!/Step down!"

The video, directed by Floria Sigismondi, gets more explicit, with images of Jesus, Mussolini, Hitler and a Bush look-alike and slogans such as "The United States Air Force Presents Brainwashing" and "Heroes Don't Ask Why." The video is making a broad historical point about power and war — "Floria said she wanted to combine Monty Python animation with the History Channel," says Boyd — but there's no way to miss the anti-Bush part of the message.

"Megalomaniac" is a Number One hit on modern-rock radio, but finding it on MTV is almost as hard as finding WMDs in Iraq. After the Super Bowl nipple controversy, MTV relegated "Megalomaniac" and several other videos to overnight rotation — but "Megalomaniac," which contains no sexual imagery, was apparently targeted for its political content. Incubus find this hilarious.

"It's fun to be relegated," Boyd says. "Everybody should try it."

Boyd says that the song isn't specific: "I'm not singing about Bush. I'm singing about a kind of destructive masculine energy. But if people take it as a song about Bush, I say, 'Yeah, great — run with it.' " Boyd is refreshingly blunt. "I'd love to see Bush out of office," he says. "I'm even at the point where I can see myself voting for someone I don't totally stand behind, just to get Bush out of office. I usually vote Green — I voted for Nader last time. But the important thing is getting homey out of there."

"I hate the way Bush talks," guitarist Mike Einziger says. "I hate the way he doesn't talk. I even hate the way he stands still."