At the Drive-In - One Armed Scissor

Trouble with your vigour today? Get-up-and-go gone the way of the dodo or Necrophagist? Not anymore. Post-hardcore is a lot like bobbing for apples, except the apples are cocaine and the bobbing is however you take cocaine (I’m not cool enough for anything that isn’t cold and flu relief). The sort of infusion of energy that Texas-born At The Drive-In provides is enough to power a thousand generators that won’t shut up and the purest hit was Relationship of Command, their Millenium year smash-and-grab that has since climbed the rocks of the post-hardcore landscape to be the bar to meet.

Unfortunately, not everyone was a fan of the final product. Not even within the band, in fact – guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López went as far as to call the album “plastic”. At The Drive-In wound up imploding at the peak of their popularity after the album’s release, with vast creative direction issues being the cited cause. We did get The Mars Volta out of it at least, which, depending on your standpoint, is either better than a like-for-like replacement or the worst thing since unsliced bread. 

With an iconic opening riff and some perfectly channelled aggression, our Rock Song of the Week pick this time, One Armed Scissor, is a quick hit of proper pop-punk power that hits you over the head and runs rings around you while the birds and stars are still spinning. Relationship of Command might have been the death knell for At The Drive-In but, even if one or more of the band themselves don’t agree, we got something pretty legendary out of the bargain. So, get your ears and noses into this one and have a merry Friday! I looked it up, noses are the cocaine thing.