After the implosion of legendary post-hardcore outfit At the Drive In, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala would go on to form The Mars Volta. This resulted in one of the most dense, most harrowing catalogs in all of prog rock. The music that these two evil sorcerers put together is a gauntlet for your sanity that few could face with a clear head. Whatever is compelling you to complete this dark ritual, we’ve put together a list of exotic, man-made substances to carry you through. Be warned; drugs that don’t look like math equations have no power here.
Self-Titled (2022) + 2CB
We begin with Volta’s 2022 comeback album, and the first to feature lyrics that wouldn’t trigger a wellness check if you posted them on Facebook. Gone are the novel-length tracks and disturbing, atonal melodies. The band settles gracefully into middle age here, embracing mellow psychedelia and song structures that a person not currently having a mental health crisis might enjoy. That makes it the perfect album to wash down with everyone’s favorite ecstasy analog, 2CB. Some light visuals and a tingly, yet slippery, sense of well-being should be all you need here.
Noctourniquet (2012) + 2C-T-7 (Blue Mystic)
This album is an oft-overlooked gem that mostly appeals to people who enjoy portmanteaus and the amplified screams of a rabbit caught in a snare. Omar’s guitar is strangely absent here, ceding the spotlight to an array of squelching, buzzing synthesizers that might pierce the ear if certain measures aren’t taken. And when we say “certain measures” we of course mean a handful of gel capsules containing the research chemical 2C-T-7, or “Blue Mystic,” according to the forty-seven-year-old Dutch cyber-goth man you’ll have to buy it from. Cedric’s caterwauling over waves of noise will keep you grounded when the walls begin to breathe and the weeping face of the kid you bullied in high school starts appearing every time you close your eyes.
Octahedron (2009) + 251-NBOMe
Let’s just get this out of the way now; “Octahedron” isn’t anyone’s favorite. Long-simmering tensions within the ranks resulted in an album that felt noodly and directionless; a simulacra of the fierce creativity that had been on display up until this point. To slog through this one we’re going to have to turn to acid’s shady cousin who hasn’t shown up to Thanksgiving in years. Much like Octahedron, 251-NBOMe is a pale imitation of a transcendent experience that only exists because crucial ingredients were in short supply. On the off chance you experience brain swelling or seizures, you won’t be missing much anyway.
The Bedlam in Goliath (2008) + 5-MeO-MiPT
We now enter the run of albums that cemented the band’s legend status among people who enjoy audio-induced panic attacks. On Bedlam we find an unhinged Volta, grabbing you by the throat and refusing to let go until you admit that in all the days of your life, ever since you’ve been born, you’ve never heard a band play like this one before. Fortunately, someone had the foresight to synthesize 5-MeO-MiPT before this album came out, so there’s no need to let it raw dog your pineal gland. The come-up will have you power-walking through the mall during the record’s explosive first half, attracting the attention of numerous security guards who will be too freaked out to actually approach you. The mania will fade into an ego-dissolving glow just in time for Bedlam’s sinister, slow burn of a finish. We recommend riding the last few tracks out in the back of an Uber, letting the driver’s panicked questions slowly become one with Cedric’s voice.
Amputechture (2006) + MDPV (Bath Salts)
Without the proper precautions, this album will chew your brain like gum and stick it to the bottom of God’s desk. You need something to put you in a state where you can hear lyrics like “The kiosk in my temporal lobe is shaped like Rosalyn Carter,” and just say hell yeah dude. Something to shield you from the psychic damage that songs like “Tetragrammaton” and “Viscera Eyes” can deal out. The free trial of psychosis that bath salts offer is the only companion that you can trust to guide you through these eight labyrinthine tracks, and to help you defeat the swat team that is currently breaching your apartment door.
Frances the Mute (2005) + K2 (Spice)
Here we find what many consider to be The Mars Volta’s highest high, but also their most challenging ascent. Frances is supposedly a concept album, but every time someone tries to explain the story to me I get a really bad migraine and then suddenly wake up behind the wheel of a car approaching the US-Mexico border. The epic arrangements and experimental ambient passages are likely to overwhelm listeners who haven’t already taped black trash bags over all of the windows in their homes. K2 pairs with Francis for this exact reason; becoming a prisoner in your own body gives you no choice but to stay laser-focused on the music. You may be tempted to check Instagram during Omar’s four-minute solo in the iconic opening track, but this isn’t an option when blinking too fast makes your heart rate skyrocket. Spice from your local smoke or vape shop will suffice, but we recommend an early 2000s midwestern gas station vintage if at all possible. (Pick up “Frances the Mute” in our store, buy the drugs elsewhere)
Deloused in the Comatorium (2003) + α-Pyrrolidinohexiophenone (Alpha-PHP)
Deloused is arguably the best debut album in the prog, marred only by an unconscionable amount of Red Hot Chili Peppers cameos. If you can only make it through one Volta album it should probably be this one, and you should probably do it with a head full of dirty stimulants. Wait for the tremors and cold sweats to set in before pressing play. The sirens of the ambulance a loved one has likely already called for you will sync up with the opening guitar line of Son et Lumiere. Just show the paramedics your Spotify listening history and they will know exactly what to do.
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Chicago’s Allister was one of the first bands to sign with DTR, and the band released their first three LPs there. The debut cult hit “Dead Ends and Girlfriends,” their sophomore lack of a slump saleswise “Last Stop Suburbia,” and the subject here, the four-piece’s third studio album “Before the Blackout.” While there is a plethora of lust online for the first two, we almost never read about “Before the Blackout” in any publication large or canceled, and that’s a low down dirty shame reminiscent of Keenan Ivory Wayans’ 1994 classic of the same name. Also, “Waiting” is a perfect opening track, and said song and more from this LP show that Allister is so much more than “Somewhere On Fullerton”. Sadly, the band split up three years after this record came out, but happily, they returned just three years later; three is a magic number.
Wisconsin should be less known for Midwestern creep, Steven “I Graphically Harmed Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s Wife And Should Rot In The SHU” Hyde, and more known for possibly the most underrated band here, The Benjamins. Drive-Thru Records snagged The Benjamins after their debut EP and released the band’s first LP “The Art Of Disappointment” to more of a whimper than a bang. The proof is in the lack of pudding here, as streams for this one are still astronomically low on Spotify, and your little tin hearts will shine in a wonderful manner if you spin this record now. 2001 was a great year for rock with non-Drive Thru Records releases such as Fugazi’s “The Argument,” Andrew W.K.’s “I Get Wet,” Jimmy Eat World’s “Bleed American,” and Bow Wow’s “Doggy Bag,” and The Benjamins should’ve been on more year-end lists as well.
A shift from mall punk to ‘80s metal showcases the ever-present nightmare that we live in a strange, strange, strange world, but Thousand Oaks, California’s Halifax wouldn’t have it any other way. The wackadoodle globalists also promised us tragedy by noticing said shift, and this LP, which is the band’s lone Drive-Thru Records full-length studio album known as “The Inevitability of a Strange World” landed at 130 on the Billboard 200, and at #1 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekers, surprising most people outside of Nova Scotia. Their/our revolution was literally televised, as the band was featured just one year before on MTV’s “The Real World: Austin” along with aforementioned labelmates Hellogoodbye, making 2006 a total “I Told You So” year for the band. Sadly Halifax wasn’t able to capture said momentum for eternity, as the band parted ways just four years later.
Hidden in Plain View released their debut album “Life In Dreaming” to a sea of underground praise but not mainstream acclaim. Pity, as this is one of the better post-hardcore releases from the aughts and we are not taking any questions on the matter. If you’re here, you likely heard this album’s opening track “Bleed For You,” which truly cuts like a band-aid, just one year prior to the release of “Life In Dreaming” on 2004’s also underrated compilation “Punk The Clock” featuring, wait for it, wait for it, various great bands to WATCH that sadly also didn’t explode outside of the punk rock world like Acceptance, Letter Kills, My American Heart, and Ritchie Valens.
Whether you spell the band name as one word or two, Orange County’s Home Grown has a legacy that should last until much later than tomorrow, and we won’t forever and ever X infinity give up our love for this underrated by definition effort. Clearly, we’re not alone, as “Kings of Pop,” Home Grown’s third and only full-length album for Drive-Thru Records has many hardcore but not that many easycore fans. The band became a power trio for this one, which provided a solid blueprint for early-aughts pop-punk, and tightened their already stacked AF sound like a long, long rope that pulls tasty, tasty treats to all with tree fiddy, regardless of whether said eaters will kiss you, diss you, never fall in love with you, or eventually leave you like everyone else always does. However, the band split just two years later, with zero signs of a comeback.
Vinnie Caruana is a smart and prolific man always and forever. After the fall of the also underappreciated and yet-to-be-listed Long Island rock act The Movielife, Caruana capitalized on his former band’s rising yet stifled momentum, formed the punk rock I Am the Avalanche, and released their self-titled debut album in the fall of 2005. Vinnie wins the badass award for this ranking article, as his murderous green eyes front two symphonic bands listed here, and fans dead and gone happily took a beating in the name of this album’s twelve tracks. Honestly, their follow-up effort, “Avalanche United” is peak IATA, but it was released via a different label so forget we mentioned it.
Midtown was poised to climb to the heights of punk or “punk” if you’re feeling nasty like Janet Jackson but not J Lo peers like Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, Something Corporate, and Parliament with “Living Well Is The Best Revenge,” the band’s sophomore studio album. Despite its sonic and songwriting superiority to every track on their debut LP “Save the World, Lose the Girl” except “Just Rock and Roll,” the best revenge was that the band didn’t live THAT well despite their GQ clothes. Still, this eleven track banger of a record, which also features vocals from demigod Vinnie Caruana, has zero filler, many vegan seitan grillers, no tunes from Attila, or meh sequels featuring your friend and ours, Ben(jamin) Edward Meara Stiller. The band left DTR for Columbia Records for this album’s follow-up, “Forget What You Know,” but disbanded just one year later.
Fans of index finger-pointing aggressive crowdsurfing pop punk likely have lyrics from this album tattooed on their lower backs, but it’s actually a solid effort for non-elitists as well. Still, the band came to an abrupt end shortly after this one hit stores, in fact in that very year, and Movielife fans had to wait fourteen years for a follow-up via Rise Records, home to non-similar genre and non-peers in any creative way that doubles as metalcore STAHS Crown The Empire, Memphis May Fire, Kublai Khan, and Johnny Lawrence called “Cities In Search Of A Heart,” which might be the most “emo” album title of 2017 not called “Fall You Again”; moon blood can’t swim in a clogged heart or any of the great lakes except for Lake Superior… We’re still laughing ourselves to death from that dad joke.
For some odd reason, Orange County’s Rx Bandits’ various follow-ups to “Progress” get way more public and private accolades than this one, even though we firmly believe that “The Resignation” and beyond wouldn’t have been possible had the band not bridged the gap between “Halfway Between Here and There” and endearingly weird yet extremely musical. “Progress” came out in 2001, not too long after the third wave/ska-punk world was lambasted, feared, critiqued, and put out to pasture, and the polarizing in the best way Rx Bandits brought a depth to said universe that was unheard, unseen, unfiltered, and unkempt prior. Anyone but you knows the truth about these fifteen tracks that frenetically challenge each listener to question the answers, turn the radio off, say hello to rockview, and in utero till the cows come home… And now the band is hipster-approved!
Let’s end this piece with a firecracker take: Before Taylor Swift, fun., Bleachers, and see-saws covered in Hubba Bubba Original Bubble Tape and pre-cum, Sports & Arts Center at Island Lake alumnus Jack “I Had A Heavy Hand In All Recorded Music” Antonoff fronted a band called Steel Train that put the “busk” in busking, and “trust” in trust fund. While the band went out with a bang via their non-DTR self-titled LP, 2007’s “Trampoline” is without question their most superior album, and easily a top ten Drive-Thru Records release. If you disagree, ask the nepo baby cast of “Girls,” but not their unlikable and deplorable characters like Hannah Horvath; these jerks are not women that we belong to. Also, “Trampoline” is the least Mark Trombino of all Trombino productions, and the previously mentioned Finch fools and TSL loons will agree at any hour, unless it is 2:00.
Looking like Danzig probably isn’t going to do you a lot of favors if you’re looking to climb the corporate ladder. But if you’re looking to level up through class ranks, you’re in luck. You know who’s willing to pay for their hobby, despite what your LinkedIn profile picture looks like? Dungeon Masters who probably look like you anyway.
Or just go straight to being a Dungeon Master. You can even wear a cloak if you want to. You can do voices, right? We think you should do voices. What’s the difference between a troll and an elf? Work it out.
You know how to totally avoid judgment of your appearance? Put on a full-body HAZMAT suit. And with all of the spooky paraphernalia you’ve been collecting your whole life, dealing with hazardous waste will be a cakewalk. As a bonus, they’ll probably let you keep any horrifying thing you find.
Fine, “Cryptozoologist,” nerd. Whatever you call it, the weirder you look the better. Now get out there and tell that camera why you missed this elusive beast again!
Think the eerie Newport mansions, where every opulent hallway and room is shrouded in haunting melancholy. The Gothic spires and ominous shadows cast by the grand chandeliers make you feel right at home. As a bonus, everyone knows that thick jet-black hair means you are immune to ghosts.
A.K.A. Funeral Home Employee. We don’t think you’re up for the director title just yet. Plus, no one’s looking at you. The families are much more focused on the grief and the exorbitant amount you are charging for a casket. We just can’t believe they picked a KISS casket over an Official Original Misfits™ one.
Dead men tell no tales and dead animals absolutely don’t judge. Even if you form their cute little inanimate faces into kind of a judgy frown, you fucking weirdo. Who else can turn a hobby of stuffing the once-living into a career of perpetual still life? Only a face not even a mother would give a job to.
If you can deal with the smell, you’re in! No questions asked. Maybe besides… What do you normally do that this doesn’t bother you? As you mop up the remnants of someone’s last bad day, remember, you’re the one who never learned to read a tab.
Yes, more suit stuff. But hey, at least you’re the center of attention this time, even if it’s the outfit getting all the laughs. Just watch out, the last guy got his eyes gouged out by a child trying to reach into the dinosaur’s mouth.
You don’t even have to do anything real! Just buy a machine that beeps, and then yell “apparition” or something from time to time. And who knows? With your spooky aura, maybe some real spirits will show up, and you’ll be back on a lesser History Channel.
You know the kind of place. Maybe it’s called “Duke’s” or something. They have a greaser type, a punk, a hipster. You might have to grow a beard but you’ll make it work. You’ll get along well with the lady next to you who is still trying to explain the moral ambiguity of her serial killer portrait sleeve. And obviously, you’ll be known for crafting perfect devilocks.
This one is simple. You get to wear a big Crocodile Dundee hat, and it pretty much covers your face.
Another easy one. People are looking at the falcon. You’re not the star of this show, bud.
The need for N64s is back, and you’re ready to fill that market gap. You might be worried about having to interact with people when dropping off packages at the post office, but after learning about Stamps.com on your favorite D&D Podcast, you can avoid the small talk entirely. It’s just you and Mario from here on out.
Put that spooky look to the test. Buy a hauntingly distinctive mansion in Bangor, ME and lock yourself away until you’ve produced the next Dreamcatcher. We’ve never read Dreamcatcher actually, is it any good?
You’ve got a face for radio and a voice for the void. Just make that 80th Squarespace ad read sound a little more natural, please.
Certainly, the mask helps. And the bees don’t care about your face, they’re more interested in your fear.
Sorry if this is so obvious but we’re just trying to be helpful. They’ll even compliment you on your weird Jack Skellington tattoo that you got when you were 15 and asked a man in a dirty garage to trace from a picture of Pete Wentz.
The humans are all at work anyway. Just hope a man that looked like Danzig didn’t abandon this scared rescue dog you’re about to pick up.
Mother! Actually, keeping her in the dark for life is a pretty good idea. A mother needs a dark wet area to flourish, so keep it healthy and you’ve got a gut-healthy good business in your closet. Sell it spiked on the side for some extra cash.
We’re saying get a job as the guy who buys pig blood for Rob Zombie movies. It’s not about who you are, it’s about how real the gore looks. And maybe how cheap you can get a gallon of… something’s blood.
