Hear At the Drive In’s Pummeling New Song ‘Pendulum in a Peasant Dress’
At the Drive In detonate a pulverizing punk attack with “Pendulum in a Peasant Dress,” their latest sample from upcoming LP in • ter a • li • a. Singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala pauses his trademark onslaught of surrealistic wordplay on the pogoing chorus (“One shot delivers us from what the heart don’t want/ But the heart is broken”), shouting over Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s torrent of whirring guitar effects.
in • ter a • li • a, the experimental post-hardcore band’s fourth LP and first since 2000’s Relationship of Command, is out Friday, May 5th. In December, At the Drive In issued the blistering lead single “Governed By Contagions.” They followed in February with “Incurably Innocent” and “Hostage Stamps,” pairing the latter with an eerie, apocalyptic stop-motion video.
The quintet recently spoke to The New York Times about the strange but thrilling process of reviving their old sound. “We had lots of conversations about respecting our fan base and everything where we had left off,” Zavala said. “We need to honor where we left off sonically last time, and we need to honor how we used to paint outside the lines.”
At the Drive In will promote in • ter a • li • a with a North American tour launching Saturday, May 6th in their hometown of El Paso, Texas. The trek concludes June 21st in Cleveland. In March, the band performed at SXSW and made good on a make-up show at New York City’s Terminal 5, following a cancellation in 2016 due to Zavala’s vocal illness.