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Sparta (band)
Sparta is an American rock band from El Paso, Texas, formed in 2001. The band currently consists of Jim Ward (vocals, guitar) and Matt Miller (bass), who are touring as a three-piece with rotating session drummers. Founding members Ward, Paul Hinojos, and Tony Hajjar were members of post-hardcore group At the Drive-In, forming Sparta in 2001 after the break-up of their former band. The band entered a hiatus from 2008 onwards for Ward to focus on his solo career and side projects, reuniting from 2011 to 2013 for a series of shows and permanently reuniting in 2017. The band has released four studio albums to date, with their fourth, ''Trust the River'', being released in 2020 after a 14-year break between releases. Sparta's music has been described by ''Pitchfork'' as "anxious, epic guitar rock", and have been described by ''SPIN Magazine'' as having "a reliably cathartic and emotionally charged presence". History ''Austere'' (2001–2002) After the demise of their previous ...
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El Paso, Texas
El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the county seat, seat of El Paso County, Texas, El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the List of United States cities by population, 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the List of cities in Texas by population, sixth-largest city in Texas, and the second-largest city in the Southwestern United States behind Phoenix, Arizona. The city is also List of U.S. cities with large Hispanic populations, the second-largest majority-Hispanic city in the U.S., with 81% of its population being Hispanic. Its metropolitan statistical area covers all of El Paso and Hudspeth County, Texas, Hudspeth counties in Texas, and had a population of 868,859 in 2020. El Paso has consistently been ranked as one of the safest large cities in America. El Paso stands on the Rio Grande across the Mexico–United States border from Ciuda ...
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Paul Hinojos
Pablo J. Hinojos-Gonzalez (born July 17, 1975), also known as Paul Hinojos, is an American musician best known as the bass guitarist for At the Drive-In, and former touring member of The Mars Volta. He is also a former guitarist of Sparta. Biography Hinojos was born in Los Angeles. He met future bandmate Omar Rodríguez-López at the age of 13 in El Paso, Texas and apparently introduced Omar to another close friend and collaborator Cedric Bixler-Zavala. Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala would later ask him to join At the Drive-In after some significant member changes in 1996, making him a part of the band's most successful and well-known line up. After At the Drive-In took an indefinite hiatus in 2001, Hinojos, along with fellow ATDI members Jim Ward and Tony Hajjar, formed the band Sparta. Hinojos left Sparta in 2005, quoted as saying, "My time with Sparta has run its course, and simply wasn't fun anymore." A few days later, it was announced that he had joined The Mars Volt ...
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De Facto (band)
De Facto was an American dub reggae band which included Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Omar Rodríguez-López, Isaiah "Ikey" Owens and Jeremy Ward. Biography The band began as small jam sessions after At the Drive-In shows. The original band consisted of Omar, Cedric, and Jeremy playing local shows around their hometown, El Paso, Texas. Cedric said, "Yeah, actually, we used to be called the Sphinktators, that was early De Facto, just more rock." Omar was actually the singer of the Sphinktators and remembers, "We used psychedelic sounds, Cedric played the bass, Jeremy played guitar, and Ralph Jasso played drums." For their first recording, they brainstormed the name De Facto Cadre Dub, which was later shortened to De Facto. The lineup of the band was switched around: Cedric played drums like he did before in his earlier bands Foss and Los Dregtones, Omar played bass, and Jeremy ran samples, sang, and did the sparse guitar work. Ralph Jasso moved to keyboards but soon quit the ban ...
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Omar Rodríguez-López
Omar Alfredo Rodríguez-López (born September 1, 1975) is an American guitarist and songwriter. He has formed or played in several bands, including the Mars Volta, At the Drive-In, Antemasque, and Bosnian Rainbows. He was the bassist for the dub band De Facto. He has embarked on a solo career, both in studio and in concert, frequently described as experimental, avant-garde, or progressive. He has also collaborated with numerous artists, such as John Frusciante and El-P. Biography Rodríguez-López was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in El Paso, Texas, and spent some of his childhood in South Carolina. He began playing the bass at age 12, but then switched to guitar at 15 because he "needed more strings". It was during this time that Rodríguez-López met Cedric Bixler-Zavala while practicing with friend Paul Hinojos. Since then Rodríguez-López has spent most of his career living and working with his close friend Bixler-Zavala. During this time he frequently collaborate ...
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Cedric Bixler-Zavala
Cedric Bixler-Zavala (born November 4, 1974) is an American singer and songwriter. He is the lead singer and lyricist of the progressive rock band The Mars Volta and the only constant member of the post-hardcore group At the Drive-In, for which he is the lead singer and occasional guitarist. He is also the lead singer of the band Antemasque, and sings and plays guitar in his band Zavalaz. Early life Bixler-Zavala was born in the United States to Mexican parents, Dennis Jose Bixler and Rosa Maria Zavala. His parents were bilingual, but Bixler-Zavala says his command of proper Spanish is limited to "Spanglish". His Spanish maternal surname, Zavala, is a Castilian version of Zabala, of Basque origin. The earliest paternal ancestors on his mother's side were fishermen and traders from the Basque region of Gipuzkoa and were employed by the Spanish government as colonists to the Spanish Louisiana. In the early 1990s, Bixler-Zavala played drums and was a vocalist for a band named ...
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Drug Overdose
A drug overdose (overdose or OD) is the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities much greater than are recommended.Definitions
Retrieved on 20 September 2014.
"Stairway to Recovery: Glossary of Terms"
. Retrieved on 19 March 2021
Typically it is used for cases when a risk to health will potentially result. An overdose may result in a toxic state or .


Classification


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Jeremy Ward (musician)
Jeremy Michael Ward (May 5, 1976 – May 25, 2003) was an American musician, best known as the sound technician and vocal operator for The Mars Volta and De Facto. Biography Jeremy Ward was born in Fort Worth, Texas and later moved to El Paso. He was a cousin of Jim Ward and was loosely associated with Jim's band At the Drive-In since its formation in 1994. After that band split for the first time in 2001, members Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López invited Ward to contribute vocals and electronic effects to their interim project De Facto, and then their more permanent band The Mars Volta. He contributed to that group's debut album '' De-Loused in the Comatorium'', and his experimental sound manipulations have been cited as integral to that album's sound. Less than a month before the album was released, Ward was found dead of an apparent heroin overdose on May 25, 2003. Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López have stated that Ward's death inspired them to kick thei ...
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Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. The band's lineup consists of founding members Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), Mike McCready (lead guitar), and Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), as well as Matt Cameron (drums), who joined in 1998. Keyboardist Boom Gaspar has also been a touring/session member with the band since 2002. Drummers Jack Irons, Dave Krusen, Matt Chamberlain, and Dave Abbruzzese are former members of the band. Pearl Jam outsold many of their contemporaries from the early 1990s, and are considered one of the most influential bands of the decade, being dubbed as "the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s". Formed after the demise of Gossard and Ament's previous band, Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with their debut album, '' Ten'', in 1991. ''Ten'' stayed on the '' Billboard'' 200 chart for nearly five years, and has gone on to become one of the highest-sel ...
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Wiretap Scars
''Wiretap Scars'' is an album by Sparta, released on August 13, 2002 on DreamWorks Records and peaked at number 71 on the ''Billboard'' 200. Only months separated this release from their debut EP '' Austere''. The album is greatly influenced by the music of At the Drive-In, with whom most of Sparta's members originally played before their split in 2001. The vocals and track naming in particular reflect At the Drive-In's ''Relationship of Command'', the last album made by the group. This is in contrast to the music of The Mars Volta, formed by two other members of ATDI (Omar and Cedric), which departs entirely from the post-hardcore genre. Critical reception ''Wiretap Scars'' garnered positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average rating of 69, based on 14 reviews. Drowned in Sound's Andy Frankowski commended the band for retaining the Drive-In sound while offerin ...
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Austere (EP)
''Austere'' is an EP by Sparta, released in 2002 on DreamWorks Records. Their first record, it was released one year after the break-up of At the Drive-In. All of the songs were re-recorded for Sparta's debut album ''Wiretap Scars'', however "Vacant Skies" appeared on the UK version of the album as a bonus track. It also appeared on the compilation album ''Dragging the Lake II'', released by Atticus clothing company. Atticus: ...Dragging the Lake, Vol. 2 It was recorded at Rosewood Studios in El Paso, Texas by Mike Major. Track listing #"Mye" – 3:33 #"Cataract" – 5:09 #"Vacant Skies" – 3:32 #"Echodyne Harmonic (de-mix)" – 3:50 Personnel * Dave Shirk – mastering *Sparta Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referre ... – engineer, main performer * Mike Major – prod ...
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DreamWorks Records
DreamWorks Records (often referred in copyright notices as SKG Music, LLC) was an American record label founded in 1996 by David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg as a subsidiary of DreamWorks Pictures. The label operated until 2003 when it was sold to Universal Music Group. The label itself also featured a Nashville, Tennessee-based subsidiary, DreamWorks Nashville, which specialized in country music and was shut down in 2006. The company's logo was designed by Roy Lichtenstein and was his last commission before his death in 1997. History In October 1994, four years after David Geffen sold his former record label Geffen Records to MCA Music Entertainment, he joined Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg to form DreamWorks SKG. SKG stood for Spielberg, Katzenberg & Geffen. The three partners later launched the subsidiary record label DreamWorks Records in early 1996. Rufus Wainwright was the first artist to be signed to the new record label, in early 1996. ...
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Post-hardcore
Post-hardcore is a punk rock music genre that maintains the aggression and intensity of hardcore punk but emphasizes a greater degree of creative expression. It was initially inspired by post-punk and noise rock. Like post-punk, the term has been applied to a broad constellation of groups. Post-hardcore began in the 1980s with bands like Hüsker Dü and Minutemen. The genre expanded in the 1980s and 1990s with releases by bands from cities that had established hardcore scenes, such as Fugazi from Washington, D.C. as well as groups such as Big Black and Jawbox that stuck closer to post-hardcore's noise rock roots. In the early- and mid-2000s, achieved mainstream success with the popularity of bands like My Chemical Romance, Dance Gavin Dance, AFI, Underoath, Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, The Used, At the Drive-In, Saosin, Alexisonfire, and Senses Fail. In the 2010s, bands like Sleeping with Sirens and Pierce the Veil achieved mainstream success. Meanwhile, bands li ...
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