10 Best Rock Bands Of The 2000s

One genre that never really got a fair shake in the '00s was prog. Although acts like Dream Theater and Tool were still making some of the most mind-melting tunes in rock history, there was no real fresh blood flying the flag for more complex arrangements among other acts like the Strokes and Velvet Revolver. Once The Mars Volta arrived though, you could feel the entire music industry snap on a dime.

Formed out of the ashes of At the Drive In, this outfit by Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala is pretty much the prog rock antecedent we had all been waiting for. Across albums like Deloused in the Comatorium, you can feel that their ambitions for rock music extended far beyond the traditional genre labels, with songs that incorporated everything from punk to rock to Spanish music to and everything in between. That was just the beginning though, with later albums like Frances The Mute bringing the conceptual framework back into play all over again.

Despite being able to combine different layers of shred into a single minute, recent activity for the band has been pretty slim, with Rodriguez Lopez and Bixler-Zavala eventually going on to form Antemasque before reuniting At the Drive In one more time. But who knows? Maybe in the new year we'll see these prog rock extra terrestrial beings touch down upon the Earth once again.