Relationship of Command

by

At the Drive-In

Edit

Omar and Cedric must have figured out some black magic before they recorded this one with the boys. From the opening distorted and processed squalls materializing from Omar's guitar on "Arc Arsenal," every time a listener rides ATDI's wave on this one it is a mysteriously thrilling experience. One can only say this about a release or two every year. I mean, really, I got this when it came out six years ago (the hyperkinetic video to "One-Armed Scissor" prompted me [see it on _This Station Is Non-Operational_]) and I've never looked back. While I no longer play it three times a day like I did then (never been bored listening after literally hundreds of listenings), I think it's something more like once a month that I listen to it these days. And it's right back into the headbanging, the chills, singing/screaming along with lyrics that still don't make perfect sense to me ("intravenously polite/ it was the walkie-talkies that knocked the pins down/ as her shoes gripped the dirt floor/ in the silhouette of dying"--"Invalid Litter Dept."), but will nonetheless grow with me for the rest of my life, like Joyce's _Finnegans Wake_ or poems by Celan.

Really, this is as good as anything Mars Volta has done (MV is my favorite operating band followed closely by Radiohead and Wilco--hallowed company!). _Relationship of Command_ is really the leaping board to the heights unknown they have reached with MV. It is also the culmination of the considerable accomplishments of ATDI, while representing a quantum leap from their nonetheless excellent preceding LP, _In/Casino Out_. What makes it a diving board to MV is the fact that we hear more of the stratospheric guitar from Omar than we had heard on previous ATDI releases and the song-writing and lyrics are leaning more towards byzantine prog tendencies. What makes it still ATDI and the culmination of everything they did is that it is still just punk, except it is refined by Andy Wallace's huge production skills and the band's (especially Omar's and Cedric's) relentlessly visionary drive. To put it in a nutshell, this rocks you on every level: emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and mostly your BODY: Cedric and Omar didn't thrash around on-stage like possessed dervishes for the show of it (it's that black magic)!

This is to say that _Relationship of Command_ is the best "punk" CD of this decade and I would be stunned (and delighted) to see anyone come to this level by the end of 2009. Really, as far as pure punk CDs go, I can really only think of Patti Smith, the Clash, and a few other stalwarts who created a product this uniformly mind-shattering. If ATDI had stayed together, they may have been able to top this, but, then again, CDs this brilliant only seem to emanate from the kinds of rough straits that the ATDI members were in at this time, and the impending break-up energy must have had everything to do with the manic surge that crackles from every second of the 45 minutes of this CD. Instead, ATDI broke up and Cedric and Omar chose to infuse their punk roots with prog and in turn came up with something different altogether (prunk?).

Everyone who has any sort of sincere love for extreme music of any sort has to own this one. And if you're not a lover of extreme music? ATDI may just expand your mind with their William Burroughs-style lyrical approach and unceasingly energetic performance/compositional approach. Put this one in a time capsule with a few other CDs to help define what both "punk" and "rock" meant in the first thirty odd years of its existence.

I'd heard that this band was totally killer, so I got Relationship of Command. A lot of the songs lived up to what I heard, but some it wasn't really for me. The singer gets too excited and into it for my taste. That sets off my emo alarm. There is very little emo that I enjoy, so the fact that I like this record as much as I do says something. If you really like punk and emo, you should defitnitely pick this up. I like the new band, The Mars Volta, with the two dudes from this band that have afros. They took some of the grand, spacey sounds from At the Drive-In (the parts I like) and ran with it.

I would venture to say that, no matter your taste, you should check out Relationship of Command by this band or Tremulant ep by The Mars Volta. One (or both) of the records is guaranteed to connect with you. These guys are talented.