At the Drive-In: Relationship Of Command : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Great rock bands emerge from unlikely Valhallas. El Paso, Texas, for instance, inspires the loud desperation of Relationship of Command, At the Drive-In's third album and Grand Royal debut. This quintet of howling Texans has concocted a bracing tonic for our millennial malaise, wrought from equal doses punk, politico-metal-rap and vintage White Panther rage (dig the wild licks and righteous MC5 Afros). Producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Slipknot) adds some arena sheen, true. But it's not enough to smooth the edges off "Arc Arsenal," a primal tantrum against rebels "robbed . . . of their cause," or to homogenize the ragged beats and mind-bending guitar flurries of "Enfilade." When vocalist Cedric Bixler sings about "dancing on the corpse's ashes" on "Invalid Litter Dept.," he's not just discussing the aftermath of a street hassle gone wrong. He's stating his anti-Top Forty manifesto for an ornery rock resurrection. (RS 850)

NEVA CHONIN