Really, though, this is pure, unadulterated Sparta. These days completed by bassist Matt Miller and drummer Neil Hennessey, the band have made a record that’s a culmination of the perfectly imperfect chemistry that flows between the three of them. Cut A Silhouette, then, is a collision of past and present. It builds off Sparta’s legacy, but equally continues the evolution of a band that has never rested on its laurels. The only thing on this record that shines as much as that chemistry between the trio is the community spirit that helped create it. Recorded in just seven days, Ward felt himself traveling back in time in the studio, yet also—as ever—forging forwards while doing so.
“It feels like a return to the community I came from and I love,” says Wars. “All the early At The Drive-In stuff was done in no more than a week until Relationship Of Command. Then Sparta sort of existed in this world of major labels and million dollar budgets and craziness. It's so easy to look at that now and say I don't belong there, but at the time I was trying really hard. When I go back and look at photos, though, to me it always looks like I'm wearing somebody else's clothes. It doesn't seem natural. So when Equal Vision asked me 'Why do you want to come here?' I said, 'I just want to come home.' They represent a community that I feel comfortable in—people that are doing it for the same reason that I do it.”
