The post-hardcore band lampooned bro culture, freaked out Robbie Williams and electrified the 00s – before imploding. Now they’re back – and determined to fulfil their potential
In the backstage area of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, At the Drive-In singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala is casting his mind back to a dark time. Not the untimely breakup of his band (more on that in a minute), but the golden age of nu-metal. “You’ve got to put it in context: we played side by side with Mudvayne and Linkin Park,” says Bixler-Zavala, recalling the band’s notorious turn at Big Day Out in Sydney, Australia, at the start of 2001. Three songs into the set, the band walked off stage after Bixler-Zavala berated the crowd for moshing and fighting, branding them “sheep”. “I saw a lot of women getting fist fought by dudes and that’s what I was talking about back then,” he says. “It was cool to be stupid and misogynist,” adds the band’s lead guitarist, Omar Rodríguez-López. “That was the trend.”
In the nu-metal era of bands such as Limp Bizkit, Korn and Taproot – when bad clothes, questionable facial hair and (mostly) terrible music ruled the day – At the Drive-In were an anomaly. From the border town of El Paso in Texas, they looked and sounded like a post-hardcore version of MC5 crossed with Os Mutantes. After a word-of-mouth rise, they found themselves riding a wave of hype. Buoyed by incredible and, at times, chaotic live performances, they were dubbed the “new Nirvana” by NME. But infighting, disharmony and creative differences left the group in pieces. Two months after the incident at Big Day Out, they announced an “indefinite hiatus”. By August, At the Drive-In were no more.
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