Listen to El Paso post-hardcore band At the Drive-In’s new album and it might feel as if time has stood still. In 2000, the band released the no-holds-barred Relationship of Command; they were at the height of their popularity, but broke up just a year later. There have been two reunion tours since then, and now a fourth album manages to pick up where they left off. The time signatures are just as dizzying, the lyrics just as nihilistic and philosophical, and the songs just as drenched in political dread and paranoia. Above all, it’s thrilling to hear the visceral combination of Omar Rodríguez-López’s scissoring, out-of-body guitar melodies and Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s gnashing vocals again. In places the production lacks the spark that Ross Robinson brought to Relationship of Command, but nonetheless, Inter Alia is a blistering return to form. Just don’t expect them to stick around for long this time either.
