Ten years ago today, El Paso's At the Drive-In released their greatest and final album, Relationship of Command. Despite it being released in the same calendar year as such modern classics as Radiohead's Kid A and Queens of the Stone Age's Rated R, you have to remember the utter insults to music that were being overplayed on major radio station across the globe. Papa Roach's "Last Resort" was in the midst of its second stint as the then-current #1 song on Billboard's Modern Rock charts at the time of Relationship of Command's release (number one on the pop charts: "Doesn't Really Matter" by Janet Jackson).
After gaining a huge cult following on independent punk record labels throughout the 90's, At the Drive-In jumped ship to now-defunct major label Grand Royal (owned by the Beastie Boys), which was a subsidiary of Capitol Records. The young Texans poured a career's worth of energy, frustration, and excitement into Relationship of Command and the end result was something that sounded so fresh and original, that when lead single "One-Armed Scissor" actually started to gain some airplay on major radio stations like Los Angeles' KROQ, pretty much all of the song that were played before and after it sounded even more irrelevant, if possible. At the Drive-In also brought their now-legendarily intense live act to late night TV shows such as Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Late Show with David Letterman.
Mere months after the release of Relationship of Command, as the band was absolutely rocketing sky high in popularity, inner-band creative conflicts and touring exhaustion, among other things, caused the band to break up. It was, and still is, a very unprecedented occurrence for a band to break up while on the verge of becoming such a worldwide phenomenon.
The five members of At the Drive-In eventually recovered from the breakup, in various ways. The bands The Mars Volta and Sparta were formed and have had decently healthy careers. The Mars Volta may have arguably improved on Relationship of Command's combination of quality and grand scale with 2003's De-Loused in the Comatorium before getting lost in guitar effect pedals and lengthy jams and never recovering. Sparta stated off strong with 2002's Wiretap Scars before fizzing out quietly, as even bassist Paul Hinojos jumped ship back to The Mars Volta eventually.
Ten years after the release of Relationship of Command, it really appears that now would be an ideal time for an At the Drive-In reunion, as both The Mars Volta and Sparta have been completely stretched thin and, according to interviews with members of both bands, enough time has passed in order for any bad blood that once existed to be wiped clean. With many once-great defunct bands finding great success in reunion tours, an At the Drive-In reunion seems not only reasonable, but inevitable.
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