Friday Night Record Party : At the Drive-In: Relationship of Command

File:At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command cover.jpg

At the Drive-In: Relationship of Command

2000

Grand Royal/Fearless Records

Format I Own it On: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Arcarsenal 2. Pattern Against User 3. One Armed Scissor 4. Sleepwalk Capsules 5. Invalid Litter Dept. 6. Mannequin Republic 7. Enfilade 8. Rolodex Propaganda 9. Quarantined 10.Cosmonaut 11. Non-Zero Possibility

It's hard for me to believe this record is 13 years old...Where does the time go?

Oh, yea...beer...

That's where it all went...Oh well... I can clearly remember hearing this back when it was a new release...I already liked At the Drive-In cos I had the "El Gran Orgo" EP and listened to it quite a bit...I remember going to the Drug Store/Record Shop ( I believe I've discussed this already...) and seeing this copy of ATDI's "Relationship of Command." This record had an incredible amount of hype at the time, so I was dying to hear it. See, I used to deliver pizzas for a living back in 2000, so mostly I just drove around listening to music. I put this on while I was doing deliveries and was absolutely dumbstruck at the level of improvement this was over their previous material. "Arcarsenal" was just so explosive I couldn't believe it. "BEWAAAARE!!!" indeed!

The guitar players sounded like they was decoding strange alien signals with their instruments, while Cedric Bixler jabbered and screamed in some heretofore unknown tongue. Who can forget hearing "One Armed Scissor" for the first time? With its endlessly bizarre lyrics and apocalyptic urgency, it was scary and exhilarating all at once. Even Iggy Pop was there, giving his most out-of-his-mind performance yet! His manic stuttering is what makes "Rolodex Propaganda" so great. He sounds totally out of control. His chillingly abstract ransom threat on "Enfilade" is equally awesome.

I'm still convinced "Invalid Litter Dept." would have been my favorite song on here if they would have only written a second verse for it...The repeating-the-first-verse thing doesn't work so well when you're doing the spoken word bit, but I'm willing to overlook it for that awesome chorus.

It really seemed like these guys (along with the Refused) were going to be the future of punk at the time. But unfortunately it never quite happened. This was ATDI's final record; the band splintered off into two different bands ( the prog/punk/metal bizarros the Mars Volta, and the more straight-forward radio-ready rock of Sparta). They also seemed to not have actually influenced anyone. I think their sound was a little too singular and complex to duplicate.

Oh well...It was one of those things that was good while it lasted and I still have fond memories of driving around that Michigan autumn of 2000...blaring "Pattern Against User" with the windows rolled-down on my Dodge Neon, delivering pizzas, reeking of garlic...