LISTEN TO MORE AT THE DRIVE-IN, MAKE YOUR DAY BETTER
Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 3:39pm by Vince Neilstein
At least that’s the philosophy presumably followed by Metal Bastard, who decided to post four tracks from At the Drive-In’s revolutionary Relationship of Command this afternoon (yeah, I said “revolutionary.” You got a problem? Let’s go.).
While I highly disagree with his categorization of the band (“emocore”???), I highly agree with this statement: “Not long after the release they split up and Cedric (vocals) and Omar (guitars) formed the masterful Mars Volta, while the other three created Sparta, the musical equivalent of narcolepsy. Avoid the latter at all costs.” Touche.
Enjoy “Cosmonaut” below, and click on over to Metal Bastard for 3 more.
-VN
Awesome, awesome song.
A very suitable album to have closed the last millennium, IMHO – and still sounds fresher than 90% of the MySpace cruft that’s tried to copy it ever since.
Love this band. All their output is good, but none of it can match this album.
saw them on ROC tour. wowsers.
another one of those albums that mysteriously disappeared from my cd collection years ago.
Love At the Drive in. Love The Mars Volta.
I was supposed to see At the Drive in on 4/20, but they broke up a couple weeks before the show. My favorite song off Relationship of the Command is Invalid Litter Dept. I was in a band once and we played the breakdown from that song in the middle of one of our originals. It actually came out really cool.
The first Sparta album wasn’t bad.
Amazing band. Shame they broke up, but gladly The Mars Volta stepped in their place.
<3
Love At The Drive In but i could never get into Sparta or Mars Volta. I really tried to get into Mars Volta but just never could.
The English language lacks sufficient adjectives and superlatives to describe how much I love this album. In fact, I think I’ll throw ‘er on right now before my wife gets home (too screamy for her tastes (and to be fair, Cedric Bixler does sound like he really needs a hug on this album)).
Ditto Chuck on the Mars Volta lukewarmness. I like ‘em a lot… sorta. But ATDI is waaaaaay better.
I’ve never listened to these guys, one of the bands I always hear good things about . I like what I hear though, maybe I should go pick this album up.
Awesome album. Non-zero possibility is a top ten in my books. I think it’s great when, to this day, MTV will use a sound clip of one of their songs, and 90 percent of the people watching have no idea that they caught a glimpse of musical gold, that they might never hear.
This album is fantastic, but I wasn’t so much a fan of their previous stuff. As far as The Mars Volta go, I love De-loused in the Comatorium, but I don’t think they’ve been able to match it since.
So we’re all pretending the Mars Volta aren’t awful? So the taste of this site’s commentators and contributors is still par for the course at “shit”.
At the Drive-In is waaaaaaaaaaay better than the Mars Volta. It’s kind of funny because ATDI started out really shitty and got better as they moved along and TMV started off really strong and now their newer stuff is horrible.
Love At The Drive In. Dont dig very much Mars Volta at all….not what i have heard. Definitely not on par with ATDI. Sparta is actually a guilty pleasure of mine, I like the band actually.
i like sparta more that the mars volta, go figure.
same here. sparta doesn’t break boundries, but are solid. mars volta are just uninspiring and a waste of time. atdi destroys both.
What a fantastic album this was. I remember it pretty much made everyone shit their pants who hadn’t heard anything like it before. Cosmonaut is probably my favorite track on it. The Mars Volta in my opinion haven’t done anything interesting since De-Loused. I’ve really tried to like their other stuff, but I can’t see it as anything other than self-indulgent noodling. I know there is more to it than that, but it doesn’t do anything for me. Sparta on the other hand has never done anything interesting but can at least write a decent song. I have 3 or 4 of their songs on my iPod, while I have 3 ATDI albums and exactly 0 Mars Volta. Obviously ATDI is probably the peak of what any of these guys will do.
I love both, but I think Sparta is underrated. Sure, they’re stuff isn’t as experimental or as groundbreaking as ATDI, but as far as just being a solid rock band – they do it well. Besides, one of the highlights for me of ATDI was their drummer, and he’s in Sparta now. Mars Volta? Well, they are what they are – you either love ‘em or hate ‘em. I can respect that.
I really hate seeing metal fans put “die emo die” next to “death to false metal”, in light of albums like this.
along with glassjaw’s first, cursive’s domestica, and the desaparicidos, there’s a lot of good, angry shit to enjoy.
also, i dig sparta, despite their middle-of-the-road-ness. it’s still good rock. TMV, yeah, first EP and de-loused showed promise, but ultimately, they’re just a jam band.
I love ATDI
I Love TMV
Some Sparta stuff is okay, but I enjoy Sleepercar more than Sparta.
Exactly how much hotlinking have you done?
Should I be worried?
And “emocore” was meant ironically, but thanks anyway.