By Chris Varias
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Just when the great emo hope At the Drive-In was on the verge, the band dissolved. In 2000 came Relationship of Command, the El Paso, Texas group's best and most high-profile release to that point; a year later they were no more.

A few of the guys from At the Drive-In decided to pick up the pieces by forming the spin-off group Sparta. Their appearance at Bogart's Wednesday night offered a glimpse of a band still dealing with the fallout two years later.

Sparta tops the bill for the current edition of Sno Core, an annual tour celebrating the overlapping cultures of winter sports and hard rock. (Shots of snowboarders, ski jumpers and such flickered upon a video screen above the stage between sets.) The 2003 lineup leaned to the punk and emo side of things, with Glassjaw, Hot Water Music and Dredg rounding out the package.

Despite headlining, and despite putting on the best show, Sparta was not the crowd's favorite. That distinction would go to Glassjaw. The club (minus the balcony, which wasn't open) was packed for Glassjaw's set, and the crowd was at its most rowdy for those 45 minutes.

When they finished a good chunk of the audience cleared out, and those who remained quietly took in Sparta.

Frontman Jim Ward could sense the lull, going almost as far as saying sorry for being on stage. He thanked the crowd "for sticking with us" through the set and apologized for touring behind the same record (Wiretap Scars) for the last year-and-a-half.

He also thanked the crowd for coming to their show and listening to good music, which said it all. Sparta's set was more challenging to the ears of the predominately teen-age crowd than the ready-made, revved-up kiddie-punk-isms of Glassjaw and to a lesser extent Hot Water Music.

Much of Sparta's set - 11 songs clocking in at under an hour with only one non-Wiretap tune - was slow and quiet, and not slow and quiet in the predictable back-and-forth way Glassjaw used slow-fast, quiet-loud dynamics.

Instead, hushed songs like "Cataract" and "Echodyne Harmonic," with keyboard and drum-machine underpinnings, were the renderings of a more accomplished rock band, and the all-out assault of "Cut Your Ribbon" out-rocked anything and everything else by the other bands on the night.

E-mail cvarias@enquirer.com