At the Drive-In
Relationship of Command (Grand Royal)
Understand, the massive hype At the Drive-In has been getting of late is all about timing. Aggressive revolutionary music is in, riding the post-Rage crest. So is aggro-producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot), and getting signed by the same man who signed Nirvana to Geffen (Gary Gersh, now with new Grand Royal parent label G.A.S.). Fortunately for you and me, every last drop of ink is warranted, ’cause Relationship of Command is one attention-grabbing slice of rage. “So who’s in charge in here?” asks frontman Cedric Bixler on opening cut “Arc Arsenal,” “‘Cause I’d really like to meet him.” Accountability is the theme, and these El Paso natives are dangerously suspicious that there is none. Bixler’s spoken/sung/shouted delivery alternates between skepticism, mistrust, and seething anger. “Self-destruct sequence … this station is non-operational,” Bixler spouts on the mad, propulsive “One Armed Scissor,” the most in-your-face four-minute barrage of napalm-on-wheels to come around the block in quite a while. Is he talking about the voiceless state of the current electoral process? “Cut away! Cut away!” screams guitarist Jim Ward, playing Ian MacKaye to Bixler’s Guy Piccioto. The ghost of Fugazi creeps up throughout this album in its outrage against the faceless mechanism of oppression that evokes Fugazi’s prime Repeater and In on the Killtaker material. Killtaker — the last great Fugazi album — was recorded in the wake of this country’s last leadership change, and Relationship gives voice to our apprehension of what the next one might bring.
This article appears in Rick Perry.