One Armed Scissor
At the Drive-In were five people from El Paso, Texas who played as if the room was on fire and they had set it themselves. Cedric Bixler-Zavala on vocals, Omar Rodríguez-López on guitar, Jim Ward on guitar, Paul Hinojos on bass, Tony Hajjar on drums. They had spent years building a reputation on the strength of their live show before producer Ross Robinson brought them to Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu in January 2000, fresh off a tour supporting Rage Against the Machine. Robinson's methods were characteristically physical: he drove Hinojos through the Malibu hills in his SUV before recording to get the adrenaline going. Relationship of Command was recorded in seven weeks, produced by Robinson and mixed by Andy Wallace, and released on Grand Royal and Virgin on September 12, 2000.
One Armed Scissor was released as a single on August 7, 2000, written collectively by all five band members, and reached number 26 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart and number 64 in the UK. The stop-start riff is the kind that enters the brain and refuses to leave, three minutes and forty-five seconds of Bixler-Zavala's controlled fury over Rodriguez-López's guitar work, the whole thing moving at the pace of something about to come apart without ever quite doing so. Iggy Pop contributed guest vocals to "Rolodex Propaganda" elsewhere on the album. When the band performed One Armed Scissor on Later with Jools Holland, Bixler-Zavala flung a chair across the studio. Robbie Williams was in the audience. He watched in silence.
"One Armed Scissor" lit up college radio and earned regular MTV rotation. The band literally bounced off the walls on Conan and Letterman. They seemed like the single most exciting band on the planet."
Relationship of Command reached the Billboard 200 and appeared on year-end lists at the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. The band performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and the Late Show with David Letterman, literally bouncing off the walls. Then, in 2001, they broke up. Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López went on to form The Mars Volta. Ward, Hinojos, and Hajjar formed Sparta. The band that seemed destined for massive commercial success dissolved at the exact moment it arrived. One Armed Scissor was the encore of their 2016 reunion tour. Some songs mark the moment a band becomes themselves completely. This was that song, and they only had it for a year.