Rock band Sparta trying to change image, but still keep former fans
By Matt Simpson
Staff writer

All things must pass, and every rock band must at some point break up. This is the point that guitarist Jim Ward has been making for the past year while trying to account for the split of his former band, El Paso’s At the Drive-In.

“If you’re done with loving playing,” Ward has said, “you gotta stop.” Ex-bassist Paul Hinojos is not quite as philosophical in his answers. “Two of the members quit,” he said.

Last summer, ATDI vocalist Cedric Bixler and guitarist Omar Rodriguez left to form Mars Volta. In the meantime, Ward got married and enrolled in some civic engineering courses at the University of Texas at El Paso. But that’s just not rock ‘n’ roll, and soon he was back spending his time playing with former band mates Hinojos and drummer Tony Hajjar.

The trio recruited bassist Matt Miller from the band Bellknap, moved Hinojos from bass to guitar, gave Ward responsibilities as lead singer, picked a name out of a hat and became Sparta.

This Friday night the band opens for Jimmy Eat World 7 p.m. at the Bronco Bowl in Dallas.

They now face the struggle of distinguishing themselves from ATDI. There is an obligation to preserve their loyal fans, while still reaching out to a different audience. A new sound must be created, and yet the old one cannot quite be alienated.

“It’s like night and day,” Hinojos said when he compares the sounds of the two bands.

He thinks for a moment, yawns, and then laughs quietly to himself. “But I was playing in both bands,” he finally admits.

For others, the difference is far less subtle: Sparta has sometimes been characterized as nothing more than a heavier reincarnation of the band that spawned them.

Their debut album, “Wiretap Scars,” begins as a simple drum beat, a couple of chords strummed on an electric guitar and then erupts into absolute noise. Ward screams the opening lyrics, a second guitar kicks in out of tune and the album settles down to become a string of predictable alternative rock songs.

There is nothing original about Sparta. Their sound is only a terribly clustered, emo-driven fusion of the several different incarnations of modern rock ‘n’ roll. Sometimes it sounds like metal, sometimes it sounds like emo. Actually it’s neither while trying to be both.

And despite the band’s insistence that the songs for “Wiretap Scars” came easily, the album as a whole seems forced and angry. Hinojos claims that there was no conscious decision to write about the split from ATDI, but everything in the album seems to revolve around that incident.

Lyrics repeatedly address a feeling of loss and the chorus from the single “Cut Your Ribbon” even quotes the bitterness of John Lennon’s post-Beatle attack on Paul McCartney in the song “How Do You Sleep?”

But ultimately none of this matters. In a lyric from the song “Cataract,” Ward sings “This time I’ll get it right.”

There is still time for Sparta. “Wiretap Scars” is, after all, only their first album, and it will almost certainly be followed by another. The record company has latched on to this new band, perhaps in the hopes of attracting former ATDI fans, but most likely for a far more meaningful reason than that. Either way, Sparta has signed a recording contract and is now being shamelessly promoted.