Here’s another review I did on Buzzgrinder for the best of the 2000’s, for At the Drive-in’s last album, Relationship of Command
Like the Further Seems Forever review, there’s a dozen things I wouldn’t write today. It’s also fun to badmouth a band some people for which some people and unquenchable religious affection.
At the Drive-in’s “One-Armed Scissor”, the single off of their mammoth swan song release, might be like the Kennedy assassination for post-rock bellwethers—they know where and when they first heard the jagged start-stop intro on mainstream radio. They immediately began to map out a clear trajectory for the band’s sojourn toward selling out-dom to a major label (or was Grand Royal too major?), using an indie rock-approved, telemetry-guided magic bullet. Something like that.
If you can push aside the mental fog of my awkward, mixing analogy, just try to understand one thing: drugs can and will hurt you. But before they do, they will elevate your artistic output to godlike levels. This band is exemplary. I will explain this.
But first let’s return my muddled prose concerning our nicotine-addled record store rat. After the song ends with Bixler-Zavala’s gonzo-rage peaking, the DJ is wondering what in tarnation his program director is thinking, and he slips out a slick Freudian, betraying his ignorance of the bombast that just preceded him. Our elitist hero rolls his eyes as the DJ tries to explain the goofball sonics he just heard, and our hero clicks off just before the first bass buzz note of the new Korn song slapped through.
So that’s kind of like the Zapruder film (OK, I’ll stop it) that serves as an overture for this tragic scenario. ATDI festered in the underground before starting to get really, really big for almost no discernible reason. On the verge of breaking through, they promptly broke up—again for no seeming cause. They did offer a few explanations, but I believe they can ultimately be linked back to the two afro dopeheads.
To wit: After their sudden collapse, At the Drive-In got their mitosis on and split into two very different bands. The druggies formed the meandering, incomprehensible Mars Volta, while Hajjar and Ward (the latter having one of the most distinct rock voices of the decade) did the wonderfully plucky Sparta. Now do you see where substance abuse will get you, and where you go when you do things right?
There, I said it. I was also the second gunman.