this came from el paso?
for those if you who don’t know, at the drive-in was a post-hardcore rock band from el paso whose best-known lineup consisted of singer cedric bixler-zavala, guitarist omar rodriguez-lopez, bassist paul hinojos, guitarist jim ward, and drummer tony hajjar. five members, in my opinion, is quite a lot. their best known albums are 2000’s relationship of command and 1998’s in/casino/out… though they only released three of them in total.
for the short time that they existed, at the drive-in created quite an impact with their explosive, complex sound influenced by drive by jehu. they inspired a lot of what would become modern emo- bixler-zavala’s emotional performance would echo in the music of my chemical romance and jimmy eat world. they were sort of at the boundary between rugged post-hardcore and highly melodic pop-punk/emo, contributing to the radio shift towards alt-rock in the late 90s.
“One Armed Scissor” is their most well-known song, from Relationship of Command. i heard it once through the algorithm, heard it again on the mlb radio, and that’s when i decided to review it this week. it actually made significant airplay in the 2000s, reaching no. 26 on billboard alternative songs. it’s definitely one of the strangest songs to ever hit the charts. it’s erratic, full of shifting time signatures and strange riffs, and bixler-zavala’s dramatic, theatrical singing and surreal lyricism make this song somewhat mysterious and even dense.
while i can’t make much sense of the lyrics, they seem to describe apocalyptic sci-fi scenery where a letter needs to be sent, much in line with the serious, frenzied pace of the song. the chorus (“Cut away, cut away”) is highly memorable and sounds like the kind of thing you would chant at a concert. it’s a strange song, but it’s not strange in that it’s highly experimental or difficult to listen to. it’s just that every piece feels like it’s in slight tension with the other, which prevents the song from becoming too familiar. and that’s what makes it pretty good.
q-street 