Wiretap Scars LP

Jim Ward, Tony Hajjar, and Paul Hinojos walked out of the wreckage of At the Drive-In in 2001 and straight into Sparta, trading that band's distortion-choked chaos for something cleaner on their DreamWorks debut, Wiretap Scars, the next year. Opener "Cut Your Ribbon" and "Cataract" got singled out for threading aggression through actual hooks, and the record climbed to number 71 on the US albums chart on its own name, not At the Drive-In's. Three guys who'd already blown up one band once figured out how to do it right the second time.