At the Drive In - like The Mars Volta - is anchored by
singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, center and guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, left.
In a conversation about acquired tastes, limburger cheese and sushi qualify for some as unpleasant experiences that perhaps, over time, they grew to not only accept but even crave.
Sonically, the descriptor has often been used to label the music of the avant-garde At the Drive In, a punk-minded band with dissonant metal and post-hardcore tendencies that after a decade and a half apart recently reunited for new album “IN•TER A•LI•A.” However, the comparison is only apt if acupuncture using steak knives or a wrecking ball to the side of your head can be labeled as acquired tastes.
Whether it’s At the Drive In, or side project The Mars Volta, Cedric Bixler-Zavala (vocals) and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (guitar) simply interpret and create music differently from the majority of their peers. For clarification on what exactly is happening when these two musical eccentrics and geniuses plug in and play, the singer sees common ground with an iconic, if often-confusing, franchise that also found new life this year.
“I’m not trying to make comparisons to any of the stuff we did to ‘Twin Peaks’, but to me it’s a big influence,” said Bixler-Zavala, calling from Austin, Texas. “Especially now because I do see a lot of people who bravely sort of admit, ‘I don’t get it. I don’t see what the big deal is.’
“But you know what’s important about it isn’t that you understand it; it’s the fact that it makes you feel a certain way. And if it repels someone, then that’s beautiful. And if it doesn’t repel someone, it gives you a different avenue of something to choose from, which is not like everything else. That’s just the way it is. We don’t write sentences that are so linear and immediate in front of your face.”
At the Drive In formed more than two decades ago and quickly grew a cult following. The band’s 2000 critically acclaimed album “Relationship of Command” is touted as one of the most important albums of its era.
Despite momentum and a growing audience, the band members went on hiatus in the early ‘00s, and that lasted more than a decade. In the interim, Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez continued on with offshoot act The Mars Volta, which further explored discordant rhythms, metal riffs and the vocalist’s distinctive howl.
At the Drive In returned in 2012 as a headliner at Coachella and Lollapalooza, but it would still take five more years before the band — Bixler-Zavala, Rodriguez-Lopez, Paul Hinojos (bass), Tony Hajjar (drums) and Keeley Davis (guitar) - finally released new music with “IN•TER A•LI•A.”
“It just feels like right now is the time,” Bixler-Zavala said. “It’s been a long process. We’ve been sort of toying around people’s personal needs, but at the end of the day when you wait six years to try to get something off the ground like this, you realize the sum is greater than the individual parts.
“You say the spirit of this machine is asking for us to give to it, so are you down or aren’t you? It just took six years to get where we are now.”
Subjectivity is something Bixler-Zavala discards as an odious distraction. Such ambivalence provides freedom to create without boundaries. And yet at the end of the day, he knows there are some fans who give power to the inconsequential. That’s why he addressed the missing hyphen - why At the Drive-In is now At the Drive In?
“I think we decided against it,” Bixler-Zavala laughed. “Someone in the band didn’t want it anymore, so we decided not to have it. Maybe it’s just part of the 2017 version of our band, knowing full well people will say, ‘I liked them better when they had a hyphen in their name.’”
