How you choose to regard At The Drive In most likely hinges on a single question: Is the venerated post-hardcore band one of rock’s great lost opportunities of the last 20 years, or did ATDI get out at precisely the right time?
There are worthy arguments on both sides. On one hand, when At The Drive In announced that it was taking an “indefinite hiatus” — the two most dreaded words in all of music flackdom — due to “complete mental and physical exhaustion” on the eve of a major U.S. tour in early 2001, the group appeared to give up on the verge of stardom. Just the previous fall, ATDI released their third and best record, Relationship Of Command, which beefed up the proggy punk of the band’s previous two LPs, 1996’s Acrobatic Tenement and 1998’s In/Casino/Out, with first-rate radio-ready production courtesy of rap-rock impresario Ross Robinson. Command spawned a sorta-hit, “One Armed Scissor,” that granted ATDI entry to late-night TV shows like The Late Show With David Letterman and Late Night With Conan O’Brien, where the band showed off its kinetic live prowess for millions of viewers. At The Drive In seemed to have it all: Powerful songs, genuine stage presence, a photogenic and charismatic frontman in Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and credibility to burn. But within six months of Command‘s release, ATDI was finished.
Frankly, for years after At The Drive In’s break-up, I subscribed to the “lost opportunity” argument. A few years after Relationship Of Command dazzled critics and won over a growing fanbase, a new generation of emo bands led by Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance was ascendent. And yet the void left by At The Drive In was palpable — this was a band that back in 2000 seemed like it could’ve potentially been the Led Zeppelin or Radiohead of its genre, a legacy act that set the tone for a legion of musical followers. Instead, At The Drive In split into two lesser bands, The Mars Volta and Sparta, which cleanly divided ATDI into not wholly satisfying “sleek alternative rock” and “absolutely bonkers prog-rock” halves. It was hard not to contemplate what had happened to this promising band felled in its prime and wonder “what if?”
Over time, however, I shifted over to the “well-timed break-up” side of the At The Drive In conundrum after hearing a persuasive case presented by a knowledge observer: ATDI guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Back in 2008, I interviewed Rodriguez-Lopez while he was promoting the fourth Mars Volta record, The Bedlam In Goliath. I don’t think I’ve played The Bedlam In Goliath in eight years, but I remember thinking it was okay. Anyway, in conversation, Rodriguez-Lopez was affable, even when I eventually steered the conversation toward a discussion of At The Drive In and the possibility that the band might reunite some day. I’m sure this happened to Rodriguez-Lopez during every interview at that time, but if he was annoyed he didn’t show it. Instead, he explained in a genial tone that At The Drive In to him was like “an old girlfriend you’re happy you got away from” and that the band in his view was creatively spent in the wake of Relationship Of Command.
“We ran out of steam right at the point when the world started noticing what we were doing. Seven years into it, people were like, ‘Hey, what about these guys over here?’ And behind the scenes, I was already thinking, ‘I guess this is it. It’s just more of the same now,'” Rodriguez-Lopez said. “I felt like Relationship Of Command, our last record, was just a rehash of In/Casino/Out, and [ATDI’s 1999 EP] Vaya was the last interesting thing that we did.”
Flash forward nine years, and At The Drive In has finally released a follow-up record to Relationship Of Command called in•ter a•li•a. The record comes after a reunion in 2012 that eventually broke apart due to in-fighting and a falling out between Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala. That led to another reunion in 2015 in which the band (sans founding guitarist Jim Ward) committed to finally recording new material.
People have a right to change their minds, especially when they might’ve been a little too hasty the first time. No matter Rodriguez-Lopez’s hard feelings about the fallout from ATDI’s emerging fame, dismissing the band’s finest work as a “rehash” was simply wrong. If he feels differently now, I’m glad. What’s curious about in•ter a•li•a, however, is how completely ATDI’s primary creative musical force has switched positions.
In an interview this week with The New York Times, Rodriguez-Lopez talked about how he deliberately rehashed the band’s old records while working on in•ter a•li•a, going as far as to make a list of the movies, books, and albums he was listening to in the late ’90s and early ’00s and revisiting them, in the hopes that he’d be put back in to his old headspace. You can sort of hear all of that prep work pay off on the record: in•ter a•li•a is a relentless collection of muscular, frenetic jams that sound like they could’ve come out in 2003, which is about when At The Drive In would’ve released a new record had it not broken up. That the band members are now in their early forties rather than their mid-twenties seems to have been magically rendered irrelevant.
On the surface, a new At The Drive In record that sounds like an old At The Drive In record seems ideal. There are surely plenty of superficial thrills on in•ter a•li•a that recall the band’s prime — “Incurably Innocent” piles on the apocalyptic guitar riffage while barging forward at an exhilarating pace, while “Governed By Contagions” demonstrates a subtle command of songwriting dynamics that was beyond the band’s grasp 17 years ago. And “Ghost Tape No. 9” is a fine example of ATDI’s underrated “goth-dude balladry” side. Even the song titles are reliably insane. Sequencing “Holtzclaw” next to “Torrentially Cutshaw” — a rhyme that sounds like a rejected Captain Beefheart lyric — might even suggest that ATDI has developed a self-mocking sense of humor.
But after several listens, a certain emptiness starts to set in. The process of making in•ter a•li•a was framed by Rodriguez-Lopez in the Times story as an attempt to stay true to the band’s legacy. But given his own legacy of running away from audience expectations, it just seems, well, weird. No matter its immediate charms, in•ter a•li•a feels like a rote, and ultimately unnecessary, exercise in running through old paces.
As Rodriguez-Lopez himself might’ve asked in 2008: Why does this album exist? The answer is hardly self-evident. As skilled as ATDI still is at making an invigorating racket, they’ve set themselves up to fall short of their high points by so slavishly following their own well-worn sonic blueprint. The better At The Drive In is at sounding like its former self on in•ter a•li•a, the stronger the impulse to simply shut it off and put on Relationship Of Command or In/Casino/Out. It’s a no-win situation that only a band so committed to self-sabotage could perpetrate. Lost opportunity or well-timed breakup? With At The Drive In, perhaps it was always a bit of both.
