It had been well over a decade since I’d heard a new song from the New York-based quartet known as Living Colour. Not for a lack of trying on their part, but the band just kind of disappeared off my radar sometime during the late ’90s. Add in the infrequent album releases, the occasional report that they had long since disbanded, even the eventual changes in the musical landscape, and after a while it became hard to expect anything new from Living Colour, much less seek it out. Until recently, that is.

When they burst onto the scene in the 1988 with their quintessential hit “Cult of Personality”, I immediately ran out and picked up their debut album Vivid. Drawing on so many musical influences and genres, Vernon Reid, Corey Glover, Muzz Skillings and Will Calhoun put together such a diverse, energetic sound that was unlike anything else in the hard rock scene at the time. Vivid brought enough power for anyone looking for heavy riffs and dizzying guitar acrobatics, but also had a sense of funk and soul to it, all topped with a insightful layer of political and social commentary. And although I had no way of knowing it at the time, when their next album Time’s Up dropped 1990, it made me a fan for life.

I still maintain that Time’s Up is an even better album than Vivid. It gave us a Living Colour that was more calculated and precise, with more exploration in their sound and even more sophisticated messages. With Vivid, there was still a sense that Living Colour was a hard rock band flirting with different genres, almost in jest. With Time’s Up, the band clearly demonstrated that they were more than that. They were instead a group of multi-faceted musicians that could bend different styles to their will. Tracks like “Love Rears Its Ugly Head”, “Elvis is Dead”, “Under Cover of Darkness” and “Solace Of You” were reminiscent of blues, funk and R&B but with a masterful integration of rock elements. And yet, there were still heavy riffs and in “Pride”, “New Jack Theme” and “Type” to appeal to the core rock audience.

After that came 1993′s Stain, which was just askew enough from the first two albums that I never took much interest in it—and going by its lukewarm reception, neither did listeners. And that’s where it started to get cloudy for me as a fan. My tastes were changing and I was increasingly gravitating towards other genres of music. Sometime around the late ’90s, I remember digging up my copy of Time’s Up and going through it again, and after doing a little searching online, the only news I could find was that the group had broken up. I was disappointed of course, and just resigned myself to the fact that I’d at least have two really great albums to hold on to. I never even knew that the band had reformed to release 2003′s Collideoscope.

Fast forward to just a week ago—over twenty years after Vivid—when I stumbled upon the band’s new album The Chair in the Doorway. I hadn’t caught wind of its release in September 2009 but I eagerly gave it a listen. Would it be the same Living Colour I knew as a young man going through high school and college? Would it be so far astray from their early work that it’d be unrecognizable? Nonsense. Before I even got through it all, I was impressed to the point where I mentioned it on Twitter:

“Really digging this album. It’s like they never left!”

To which I soon received the following reply from @LivingColour:

“we didn’t”

Well, not only was I kind of embarrassed (OK, a lot embarrassed) but it really got me thinking about those first two albums and how much I loved them. It also made me think about how a band can have such a unique approach to their music and their sound, and after so many years, still come back together and knock one out of the park. How had I come to dismiss these guys? Was it because they were no longer relevant? Or because their music just wasn’t as good as it used to be?

The truth is Living Colour has always been relevant. It’s one of the staples of everything they do. And like all truly great bands, their music has always been an innovative mixture of styles and genres. As it turns out, the new album gives some interesting insight into the state of the band. Songs like “Burning Bridges”, “Hard Times” and “Behind the Sun” tell us that they consciously decided to step back from the spotlight, both for their music and for their own sanity. Living Colour had weathered the storms of life like everyone else over the years, but also took the time to reflect and focus on their music, which feels just as energized and soulful as ever.

From the looks of it, The Chair in the Doorway has been taking a lot of old fans by surprise, earning the band the noble-but-burdensome “under-appreciated” status in today’s rock music scene. Did Living Colour ever really leave? Of course not. What they did do is step into the shadows just enough to make discovering them all over again that much more rewarding.