Sparta - Austere

What happens when a mildly underground rock band becomes super famous and is hailed as "the next big thing" by all kinds of press, television, and mixed media? Two of the members quit, that's what happens. At least in the case of At The Drive-In that's what happened. The band was getting loads of press, having their video on MTV.. hell, they had a video! But the pressure proved to be too much. So Omar Rodriguez and Cedric Bixler walked. So what the hell does all that have to do with Sparta? Though you may have already known, Sparta is the remaining members of At The Drive-In (Jim Ward, Paul Hinojos, and Tony Hajjar) joining forces with longtime friend Matt Miller (and ATDI manager Blaze James). Amazingly enough, Sparta is not exactly like At The Drive-In. It is, however, similar. The vocals are quite reminiscent just in their overall sound, but the band has taken a more melodic approach. The screaming has turned into singing and got alot of emotion behind it. Not like whiny-emo emotion, but honest feeling. "Mye" (the lead off tracK) has Jim repeating over and over "This time I'll get it right..." A sentiment probably more than inspired by his experience with ATDI. "Cataract" is the more mellow of the three typically structured rock songs (the final track "Echodyne Harmonic" is more of a downbeat Radiohead Amnesiac-esque kind of experience). And then you've got "Vacant Skies" rounding it out with some more straight ahead rock. It's a four track EP so it's really hard to get a grip on what Sparta is going to eventually become, but if the experimentation with programmed drums and keyboards continues it will definetly make for an interesting full-length. Don't get me wrong, it has it's fair share of guitars and beating drums, but the band is spreading out from it's sound in ATDI. Austere isn't by any means ground breaking but it is a promising look at a group of musicians who picked themselves up from an ill-timed breakup and created a refreshing take on their old sound for themselves. The lack of one manstyle point comes from it only being 4 songs and one of those four being an out of place "de-mix." I give them credit for trying something new but the 3 rock structured songs would have been enough. [www.spartamusic.com]