Track Listings

Recorded live in the studio, 1998's IN/CASINO/OUT finds At the Drive-In refining the restless sound of its debut, ACROBATIC TENEMENT. By simultaneously channeling its concert fury and adding more melody to its hardcore-influenced approach, the Texas-born ensemble succeeded in expanding its palette in terms of both creativity and popularity. This is immediately evinced on the blistering opener, "Alpha Centauri," which is marked by the passionate wail of frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala and the stinging guitar lines of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Jim Ward. While ATDI couldn't easily be pigeonholed, the band's reputation as an early emo act rests, for better or worse, on plaintive tunes such as "Hulahoop Wounds" and the piano-led "Hourglass," a track with lead vocals by Ward. However, those looking for the eccentric, prog-inspired rumblings of what would become Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez's Mars Volta need only hear the jazzy, frenetic "Shaking Hand Incision."